War is 95% boredom and 5% terror - just like this movie

Rating: 7/10 (20 January 2020)

Filming a movie in one continuous take sounds good in theory, but as 1917 shows, doesn't work in practice. It shows that this style should be used sparingly, and in just some scenes, like the amazing waterfall scene, which looks fantastic.
Overall the one take makes for a very slow journey which at times is just boring.
Another problem is that once again we have the curse of written and directed by the same person. Noooo!
This means there is no one to tell the writer where they have gone wrong. And it also looked like there were no military advisors either.
At times the visuals were amazing, but there were numerous script errors.
Why would two soldiers who have been bombed and machine gunned race to pull a German pilot from his crashed plane? Why would the pilot (who has been badly burnt) stab his rescuer?
How could a soldier with hob nail boots walk across a metal hand rail on a bridge - he would have slipped off.
When fighting a sniper, if you keep popping up from the same spot you would be quickly shot - unlike the hero.
When you are being shot at you hear the impact of the bullet (it doesn't explode like in this move) and at the same time the crack of the bullet, and then the sound of the gun being fired - depending on how far away the shooter is. Unlike depicted here.
Please stop showing soldiers before the 80's walking around like SWAT with their rifles at the shoulder - they didn't do this! They normally carried their rifles at the port.
And why didn't our hero swing and hit the German soldier with the butt of his rifle instead of grabbing him and telling him to be quiet? The butt swing was part of basic bayonet fighting drill back then.
Why wasn't there continuous gunfire in the background? Especially at the end when at the aid station where there was total silence.
Why were the men sprinting once over the top? They weren't running a 50 metre race, but having to walk maybe 100 metres through mud and shell holes and fight at the other end. historical footage shows the troops walking.
And to finish, there was too much energy at the aid station at the end. These would have been exhausted troops. Just carrying a body on a stretcher for 50 metres is hard work enough. Yet extras are running everywhere.
1917 should have been so much better. Such a shame.