POSITIVES:
1) The technical achievement from the director and cinematographer to shoot the entire film to appear as though it is all one continuous take is so impressive. It's something really unique to this film and that makes it so memorable to me 2) Leading on from the above point, the film has some brilliant action set pieces and part of what makes them so brilliant is the fact that they feel so real and so relentless because it gives the appearance that there are never any cuts 3) I do think the film feels "important". I think there's a reason that so many iconic British actors agreed to give up their time to do small cameo appearances in the film. I also think the film does a good job of not shying away from some of the horrors of war and making us feel real empathy for these soldiers and what they had to go through. It feels very grounded and realistic and true to the time that it's set in
NEGATIVES:
1) A big issue for me with the film is that I'm never able to suspend my disbelief enough to get on board with the central premise of the mission that our two heroes have to undertake. Everything about the opening scene with Colin Firth giving the exposition just always frustrates me every time I watch this film. I can't make myself get on board with the idea that we have these aerial scans of the area but no way whatsoever of contacting our soldiers other than making two lance corporals travel such a great distance on foot to hand deliver a letter. What makes it worse is that the reason these two specific lance corporals are chosen is purely because one of them happens to have a brother in a different regiment? Surely that isn't how we'd choose which men go on a mission of such high importance? Crazy 2) My other main issue with the film is that I feel like it really has some pacing issues. For a lot of the runtime it feels like we're really progressing forwards towards the goal of the delivering the letter, and as I've already said the action scenes are intensely great, but what bothers me is that there are still a handful of long dialogue scenes which feel like they're really grinding the film to a halt. The worst example of this was where the film stops so all the soldiers can go push a truck out of a ditch, I've no idea what was supposed to be the purpose of that scene to us as the audience.
1) The technical achievement from the director and cinematographer to shoot the entire film to appear as though it is all one continuous take is so impressive. It's something really unique to this film and that makes it so memorable to me 2) Leading on from the above point, the film has some brilliant action set pieces and part of what makes them so brilliant is the fact that they feel so real and so relentless because it gives the appearance that there are never any cuts 3) I do think the film feels "important". I think there's a reason that so many iconic British actors agreed to give up their time to do small cameo appearances in the film. I also think the film does a good job of not shying away from some of the horrors of war and making us feel real empathy for these soldiers and what they had to go through. It feels very grounded and realistic and true to the time that it's set in
NEGATIVES:
1) A big issue for me with the film is that I'm never able to suspend my disbelief enough to get on board with the central premise of the mission that our two heroes have to undertake. Everything about the opening scene with Colin Firth giving the exposition just always frustrates me every time I watch this film. I can't make myself get on board with the idea that we have these aerial scans of the area but no way whatsoever of contacting our soldiers other than making two lance corporals travel such a great distance on foot to hand deliver a letter. What makes it worse is that the reason these two specific lance corporals are chosen is purely because one of them happens to have a brother in a different regiment? Surely that isn't how we'd choose which men go on a mission of such high importance? Crazy 2) My other main issue with the film is that I feel like it really has some pacing issues. For a lot of the runtime it feels like we're really progressing forwards towards the goal of the delivering the letter, and as I've already said the action scenes are intensely great, but what bothers me is that there are still a handful of long dialogue scenes which feel like they're really grinding the film to a halt. The worst example of this was where the film stops so all the soldiers can go push a truck out of a ditch, I've no idea what was supposed to be the purpose of that scene to us as the audience.
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