Review of Journey's End (2017) by Jeffrey S — 01 Apr 2018

In a similar manner to how one gets bored when watching a really long play. It's not bad by any means, but it's a dry affair.

To be fair though I don't think this movie was really meant for me as I like my "war" movies to be rather visceral. With my golden standard of WW1 movies being Paths of Glory and Lawrence of Arabia. It's not entirely fair to compare Journey's End to those kind of movies as this is very much a closer/intimate kind of movie.

The story is very much a sort of British stiff upper lip approach as it follows officers of Section C, 6 days before the German Spring Offensive. The movie immediately becomes a character study about dealing with trauma rather than a "war" movie and so there's a lot of talking and drama but not much action. You don't spend much time with the average troops nor the Germans as the entirely of the movie mostly jumps between its officer's point of views in their small officer room.

The camerawork has a tendency to zoom in and use profile shots of its officer characters for most of the movie. While this lends itself to the rather claustrophobic approach of the trenches it aims for, after a while it becomes rather dull as no other shots really appear in the movie until the end of the trench raid sequence.

The best scene in my opinion is apparently one where they go off script a little from the play and that's the Trench raid. There's a build up and anticipation to the raid and it climaxes as a messy brief affair that works in its favor as a payoff to that scene. The scene's action comes in brief half completed clips almost how life mimics the rush of adrenaline as you try to recall things while under stress. This works brilliantly in the movie's favor and I wish they did something similar for its ending.

While they try to do something similar in terms of suspense building for the ending. There isn't really a payoff to the build up other than a reference to an earlier dream sequence and a small showing of the biggest killer of the war - artillery. While the artillery barrage is interesting its almost complete lack of gore makes it feel rather lackluster.

The lack of a follow through by German troops outside of the very end in a casual mop up manner,, also sort of robs the film of any kind of satisfactory payoff. Since the most important scene in the movie takes place off camera as we flash forward to after the events. Thus the movie ends with a historical note crawl of how many casualties were taken in the German Spring offensive of 1918 but we barely feel its impact.

This in turn kind of makes the movie more of a character study with no real need to actually have been set in WW1 other than that war is looked upon by contemporaries as a wasteful war.

Highlights however do include a well done cast with no weak points and a well done production value as the uniforms as well as the trench itself looks fantastic.

So is it a good movie?

It feels like a good play that was made into an okay movie.

I would recommend at least one watch if you're interested in the subject matter or love plays, but I would be hard pressed to watch it a second time myself.