Best one

Rating: 6/10 (31 December 2019)

'Rogue One' is the best Disney Star Wars film, which is not a high accolade, and the best Star Wars franchise film since the original trilogy, which is a similarly low threshold sadly.
In its own right 'Rogue One' manages to tell a decent tale; plus show respect and sympathy to its originating source material and, as a vehicle for Disney, it manages to establish a reasonable start to Disney Lucasfilm's desire to produce self contained anthology spin off Star Wars films.
Built upon a foundation of such films as 'The Dirty Dozen' or 'The Magnificent 7' a random ragtag group of individualists pursue a common purpose for an almost common goal against the backdrop of a powerful military threat 'Rogue One' tells it's story straight and without too much originality. As it is attempting to justify its own newness as a Star Wars anthology film this is probably a reasonable restraint in narrative invention.
However there is a more involved level of treatment in the films themes, which focus on generational split, trust, manipulation, opposition of agendas and the experience of youth in an already established world created for them, by their elders, not by them. All these themes are played out via character traits, interactions and discoveries and under the pressure of the sprawl of an oppressive, destructive and hateful Empire pressurising every enmeshed characters realities.
As an anthology film 'Rogue One' is positioned as an unofficial prequel to 'A New Hope' which it respects in its iconography whilst expanding on in cannon: the idea that the oppression and extortion that the Galactic Empire functioned by had caused the Death Star itself to have deliberately had a design flaw worked into it as a personal rebellion by its Chief designer.
There are certain problems with the narrative delivery of 'Rogue One', the plot development and characters that prevent me from giving a higher rating however.
The plot is overactive and loses a lot of its focus with jumping left and right at every opportunity to the next world and set piece action routine.
There is an overall loss of direction for the actors and scenes as the film enters it's second half.
Too many supporting characters fail to be characterized in their own right but are instead given just one identifying feature/function; this may be due to the declining directing of the film, or the writing: simply put there are too many characters doing similar things to satisfactorily differentiate.
The juddering midpoint sequence of the film where the "Rogue One" team and mission forms up is not so well prefigured and is therefore uneasily established.
The level of contrivance needed to get a desperado team (Rogue One.) from within an over cautious rebellion at that juncture takes some accepting.
The climactic battle, happening in and around the imperial library has the sense of being designed for a computer game and not a film. It's echoing of infiltration on the Death Star in 'A New Hope' and the confrontation between Luke and Darth Vader in 'Empire' doesn't outweigh that it is utterly unbelievable as a developing story.
The space fleet battle around the planetary shield gates in orbit above the library is even more garbled. The entire shakedown of that battle suggests the imperial forces affording every opportunity to the rebels. Again like a computer game opponent.
I rate 6/10 for a Star Wars film that I prefer to any other made in the last 35 years. It honours it's sources and builds carefully upon the visuals and themes of the original trilogy. Whilst developing it's own comments about the damage done by tyranny and resistance via it's own characters. Larger problems with the film are balanced by these strong attributes.