The 1930 and 1979 adaptions of the book are way better, you should watch them instead if you are looking for a true to source experience.
This is very sad because production quality wise this movie is made very well and shows the horrors of ww1 in a gruesome and very graphic fashion that leaves no one unharmed after watching this.
All in all the movie suffers greatly from the bad adaptation of the source material, despite its cinematography being very good. Still it feels like a wasted opportunity.
One thing that really bothers me though and i will never understand it fully is the laziness in some of the details, for example rifles having no recoil in the battle scenes. In the opening scenes i asked myself why the german soldier is racking the bolt of his rifle because i didnt get that he was supposed to be shooting. Once you see it you can never unsee, and details like these ruin whole war movies for me personally.
This is very sad because production quality wise this movie is made very well and shows the horrors of ww1 in a gruesome and very graphic fashion that leaves no one unharmed after watching this.
All in all the movie suffers greatly from the bad adaptation of the source material, despite its cinematography being very good. Still it feels like a wasted opportunity.
One thing that really bothers me though and i will never understand it fully is the laziness in some of the details, for example rifles having no recoil in the battle scenes. In the opening scenes i asked myself why the german soldier is racking the bolt of his rifle because i didnt get that he was supposed to be shooting. Once you see it you can never unsee, and details like these ruin whole war movies for me personally.