As beautifully constructed as "Nimrod" itself

Rating: 10/10 (6 January 2018)

The best adjective I can use to describe this film is pulsating. It keeps you engaged throughout.
This is done in a number of ways: firstly, there's the claustrophobic intensity. Almost all the scenes are set in the midst of action where bombs could land and lives could be taken at any moment. The characters run, bob, sink and gasp in the efforts of survival. Battle scars are etched on their faces and in their psyches. They are war-weary, suffering in the face of an unwinnable battle and yet the will to go on is palpable and arresting.
Then there's the complexity in the portrayal of the soldiers. Yes we see heroism but we also see fear, selfishness and naked hostility among supposed allies. The environment has become almost every man for himself and we see only moments of self-sacrifice amidst the general current of self-preservation. This must be what a man must go through in such a war. The glory of fighting for your country is a motivator for some but the pure, instinctive desire to live must course through the veins of many a soldier, especially when conscripted and in the face of such bloody battle.
The film is brilliantly edited and paced. You're thrust into the action and never let out; you feel what it must've been like to suffer the way these men suffered and you, as the watching public, feel compelled to salute the heroism it must have taken to merely be able to survive such brutality. "All we did is come home." One soldier says. "That's enough." Replies a civilian saluting the sacrifice which came from enduring the experience of war.
Well done Nolan, you drew me in expertly and kept me engaged right up to the emotional and fittingly reverent finale.