By Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes returns with an ambitious First World War story told through the effect of one interrupted shot.
Any of us would’ve forgiven Sam Mendes for choosing to follow up two of the biggest James Bond movies of all time with a film of a smaller, more intimate scale. While his latest, 1917, may deal with a more intimate subject matter and is inspired by stories from Mendes’ own Grandfather, making a war film as if it were filmed in one shot is no easy task at all. The results are ambitious, staggering in scale and filled with imagery that will prove hard to forget.
Northern France, Spring 1917. The German forces are seemingly retreating, with the 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment planning on launching an attack on the apparently dwindling German troops. That is until new intel reveals that the British troops gathered for the offensive are walking into a trap. Young soldiers Schofield (George Mackay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), the latter of whom has a brother in the Devonshire Regiment, are tasked with travelling across No Man’s Land to deliver the message to call off the attack. With their journey fraught with peril, will they make it in time to save thousands of British lives, Blake’s brother amongst them?
Read the full review over at THN.
Andrew Gaudion 