Jeremy Gordon

Very disappointing. Clever, and at times brilliant cinematography. But that’s it. The characterisation is curiously awry, particularly for personal relationships set in 1917, and at times jarringly unconvincing. The scene involving our hero’s chance encounter with a beautiful young French girl with a baby in an otherwise deserted bombed out town in the middle of the night was cringingly absurd. The script, the characterisation, the overblown camera work, the cheesy, predictable storyline, inaccurate points of historical detail, and the rather self-satisfied cameo appearances of messrs Firth and Cumberbatch mock the title, one of the worst years in the First World War.