Like watching someone play a video game.

Rating: 3/10 (11 January 2020)

If you read the previews saying what this film is about, well -- that's it. Two hours of following the two soldiers, then one, try to get the extremely important message to save 1,600 lives.
It is intended to look like one uninterrupted take, but is actually a bunch of longs takes (longest was 9 minutes) stitched together perfectly at points where detail was not critical, like following William running from the other side of a fragmented wall, in the dark.
The good:
Outstanding set. Pristine, spotless mostly, even beautiful, but not realistic.
Cinematography. From a technical point of view, outstanding. I can't imagine better, given the one-shot requirement by the writer/directory. But, boring after the first long fast walks through trenches.
Special effects. Excellent, I think, which means not obvious -- most of the time.
The bad:
1. There is NO story. Let's just say one, get the message to the commander about being ambushed. 2. Way too many narrow escapes. All those open shots at William and not one hit him. Most of them not even close. 3. Everything dead except a cow. Plus a bucket of milk fresh enough to drink and no one around to milk the cow. 4. Planes flying over that could have easily dropped a message to the commander in a short length of time, but no, let's do it the nearly impossible way. 5. A beautiful woman with someone else's unexpectedly in the basement room where William ducks into while being chased. And, guess what, he has a canteen full of milk. The baby coos and makes happy noises though starving. There goes the one long take. 6. William walks up on a huge group of soldiers with one standing in the center singing and no one notices or questions him, even after several minutes. 7. Plenty of time and skill to tiptoe across the broken side of a bridge and jump 5 or 6 feet from one narrow (6 - 7 inches) beam to another. I wonder how many times that took. One screw up and they have to start over at the beginning -- one shot. 8. Clean cloths, clean, shaven faces, nice perfectly white teeth. 9. Zero character development.
I could go on and on.
I couldn't wait for it to be over, but always expecting it had to get better because of all the reviews. Two stars for cinematography and set design.