Why you can trust GamesRadar+
A sluggishly-paced tale of four World War One soldiers (a group of grunts that includes poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen), who meet in a Scottish hospice in 1917 and recall their wet, soggy, shell-shocked time in the trenches. The film's ultimate triumph is MacKinnon's (Small Faces, Trojan Eddie) insistence on portraying the effects of conflict on the psyche instead of wallowing in national pride and pompous machismo. Not only that, but he gets inside the characters, exploring the relationships between doctors and patients, men and women.
Unfortunately, Wilby's Sassoon and Bunce's Owen are irritatingly over-emphasised, making it difficult to take their poetic mutterings and tales of battle seriously. It's doubtful that you'll remember this film a year from now, but it's definitely worth checking out as a war picture that's brave enough to focus on the people and their feelings rather than the hardware, explosions and inexplicable, bullet-dodging escapes.
The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.
The Inside Out 2 panic attack scene is one of the best depictions of anxiety ever – and something Pixar director Kelsey Mann is incredibly proud of: "I couldn't be happier"
When making Kingdom Hearts, the "one thing" RPG icon Tetsuya Nomura "wasn't willing to budge on" was a non-Disney protagonist
The Witcher fans in shambles after a new book reveals just how old Geralt really is