Joanna Backhouse

Bad script (British soldier kicks over bucket of coals in recently abandoned German trench; they sizzle as they hit a puddle. "They've not been gone long," he says. Duh!) Wooden acting, especially the copious numbers of very clean, tame rats. No real tension due to completely unvarying pace. In a film that aims for realism, the sight of a cosy room in the midst of a burning city, inhabited by a clean, well-fed young girl and a contented baby by a log fire, with a comfy chair was only marginally less credible than the idea that Will the soldier could be carried down an (apparently Alpine) river, with rapids and a waterfall and crawl out without sustaining so much as a bruise. The whole thing was topped off with Richard Madden struggling to manage an emotional wobble at the news of his brother's death. He needed to watch Matt Damon do it in Saving Private Ryan.