An impressive film

Rating: 7/10 (5 January 2020)

It's beautifully made and has just enough action to keep tensions high and tug at the heartstrings, intimately depicting the human cost of war. I got emotional a few times.
I do caution that as a War movie, it's more of a drama than an action film. Sure there's action and suspense, and some thrills, but this isn't Saving Private Ryan or Dunkirk from a visceral standpoint. It's smaller in both scale and scope.
1917 follows a couple of soldiers as they journey to the front line carrying information which could save over a thousand of their fellows soldiers' lives... if they get there in time.
It's in the aforementioned scale and scope where 1917 falls short of being great. The main plot of the movie suffered for not being big enough or feeling important enough. There's no storming of the beaches at Normandy. No rousing Winston Churchill speech at the end. The film doesn't connect the events it depicts into their greater significance in the war. Again, it felt small scale and narrow in scope.
But to reiterate, I very much liked it. It's a lovely film filled with tension and emotion, think Kubrick's Paths of Glory without the 10/10 ending. Great work by all involved: Director Sam Mendes, Composer Thomas Newman, the whole cast and crew.
One of the years best films, probably at the bottom of my top ten.