I wanted to like this.....

Rating: 4/10 (26 January 2020)

I really wanted to like this but kept seeing jarring flaws that ruined the experience and found myself rolling my eyes. The Blake character seemed grossly overweight for a WW1 soldier, as though he'd been eating pizza every night. Even though they'd been given information that the German's had pulled back they seemed blase about wandering around in "No Man's Land" (despite being terrified of going over the top just moments before), and seemed horrified by the sight of a dead horse despite WW1 soldiers being used to seeing human remains on a daily basis (Schofield is supposedly a Somme veteran). The German's could have left snipers, no matter it soon became a stroll in the park (at one point discussing Apple blossom). They observed aircraft flying overhead without a care in the world, out in the open, despite the possibility that they might be strafed by them, or set off a Booby trap in an abandoned German bunker which resulted in Schofield merely getting dust in his eyes. The Schofield character walks across the top of a damaged bridge when he could have crawled across, sure enough a German sniper sees him (but couldn't hit a barn door of course.) Minutes before there were British soldiers galore at the very spot, but the Germans didn't see them somehow? Much has been made of the Sikh soldier. Of course there were many Sikh soldiers helping the British in WW1, but normally in their own units, and despite seeing several in the film, West Indian soldiers were not mixed in with English line regiments like the Devons. The list is almost endless, and it's a pity, because a great deal of money and effort was put into the sets, uniforms and so on. The WW1 film "Journey's End" (2017) is a vastly superior effort, and yet received only a fraction of the attention that this film has had.