Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Movie, Book, and Music Review "1917" - movie

I watched the movie 1917 last night. Two British Army corporals are tasked with taking a very important message from a commanding general to the commander of an advanced regiment who is planning an attack on the German lines. Apparently, they will be walking into a trap. The order is for the commander to stand down from his planned attack, as his 1,600 men will be butchered if they walk into the German trap.

The two corporals are selected because both know how to read maps and use compasses, plus one of the young men has a brother in the outfit that will be slaughtered. The young corporal wants to save his brother from being killed.

The Germans have cut all the British telephone lines therefore the message must be carried manually, nine miles, out across "No Man's Land."' The movie follows the two young men as they obey orders to carry the message trying to reach the commander in time to stop the attack. Lots of twists and turns including the longest uninterrupted camera tracking shot I've ever seen ... and the longest in any movie ever made.

Good acting with high production values. One to ten, I say eight. My opinion.

L.W.

Thanks. I decided to sit out Midway but think I'll go see 1917

Midway was great. Looking forward to 1917

I agree with papat - 'Midway' WAS great and I saw the previews of '1917'. I look forward to seeing it soon.

There seems to finally be some decent movies coming out now. (Holidays...?)

Brittman

Midway was an excellent movie.

Meh.

1917 is high on my list of movies to see soon.

Definitely worth the price of admission

Meh, a cross between Saving Private Ryan and Gallipoli.

It was pretty cool how it was shot though.

Was Gallipoli any good? I noticed the other day that it was on Amazon Prime Video. Had never heard of it before that.

It was okay. Not really a lot of action, more of a "horror of war" kind of film.

Also my opinion.

I saw it last night. I thought the movie was very good - one they didn't introduce some stupid love interest into the movie or some side story to make the story more layered and secondly they didn't try to build up these characters into some super human effort. The movie is solely focused start to finish on two men asked to deliver orders thru enemy lines and the difficulties they face. The camera angles are amazing, you'll never see a movie filmed like that.

It also throws you a pretty significant twist about 1/3 of the way into the movie. Just for the plot and story, I wouldn't think its worth going to a theater to see, but for the ...I guess the word is ,cinematography , you'll want to see it on a giant screen.

No bullshit 3D effects or CGI (as far as I could tell, I'm sure its there for battle fields but almost all the movie is tight shots. )

My favorite shot was probably the most subtle as they walk around this pond created by a mortar blast and the camera follows them at water level over the pond as they walk. Its a really cool effect.

one major hole I thought which won't give anything away since its in the previews - they show planes throughout the movie, why not fly the message over enemy lines and land the plane 100 feet from the Colonel?

It's good in the sense that 1917 is good.

It's not a war film in the sense of Braveheart, or Saving Private Ryan. It doesn't leave you feeling good or patriotic. It more or less just shows the horrors of war and how most normal people just want to be somewhere else. But they still go primal to get through. But they'd much rather not have to do so.

One of the reasons WWI is such a good fit for the story line. Because by all accounts it was one of the most horrific and pointless wars ever fought.

They make that pretty clear throughout the film.

I'm glad you liked it but it should have been titled "A whole bunch of schit covered really poorly in a short amount of time + CGI"

Prime has a really good documentary covering WWI right now.

It starts with the political climates in pre-war Europe and goes from there.

It is very thorough and very well done.

well then tell me because I obviously didn't catch it

The first indicator is the fact that they choose a blood relative of one of the 1,600.

The second indicator is they let him choose a person of equal rank to partner with.

The third indicator is the commissioned officer warning the messenger that he should give his message with more than one as an audience. Because the likelihood of his message being ignored was very high.

Another indicator is the dogfighting that is shown in parts of the film.

This doesn't mean there aren't any holes in the story. There definitely are if you want to pick it apart, but they did a good job of providing enough context to justify the story. It's more a story about people, than war itself.

I don't think the first 3 hold any weight to the idea a pilot could fly over, land in 25 minutes and deliver the message

I get it , the story is about the delivery of the message, but I think its a major hole to introduce planes in the sky (and showing ally superiority to boot)

It's also a major hole to think the Germans would give up all that ground in an attempt of a surprise attack.

It's also a major hole to think there was a motorized convoy crossing occupied/no man's land type areas.

It's not that kind of movie.

But the script does a pretty good job of explaining why these two were picked for the task.

A (surprisingly) cogent post ! 😉

I agree.

They actually provide more of an explanation for the way the mission is executed but it would give away spoilers.

My wife and I saw it yesterday. It is a cross between a movie and a video game and shot that way on purpose. The way it is shot is exactly the way video games are put together. The primary 2 characters are almost never off screen except to view surroundings through their eyes. There is very little dialog, and no complex sub plots. The prime characters have to figure out how to get from point A to point B. Along the way they have to figure out the best way around or through obstacles. Think of each challenge they faced as another level to be defeated before going on to the next level of a video game. They get assistance from a few people along the way and during parts of the movie they are literally finding their way through a maze like in a video game while being chased by Germans.

It was a great movie. On many levels very simple, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I had the same video game feeling.

The motorized convoy that made their arrival so stealthily was kinda weird.



The wife and I saw it a couple weeks ago. Both of us liked it, a lot.