Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

GazerRise Fantastic!

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

mikeburnsgln Where to begin, where to begin...OK, let's start at the start. I guess the producers thought it would be a cute effect to give the German protagonist an English accent, so that we could see the similarities. However, rather than being cute it's confusing. Probably deliberately so, but as a plot device it falls flat. Once in miraculously-always-clean uniform, the distinction is made.Next. Our protagonists on both sides volunteer in 1914, and are rapidly in the front line. This could be correct for a German Kriegsfreiwilliger, but was highly likely not to be the case for a British 1914 volunteer - the first units raised in 1914 didn't see action until 1915, and many not until the Somme.There's so much that's wrong about it, I'll just list a few of the many, many massive clangers:Trenches apparently untouched by 7 days of bombardment.Soldiers who, we are told, haven't been able to eat or drink for 7 days somehow manage to find enough water to shave.Soldiers in the line practically all the time.A British front-line dugout that was roomy, well-lit, contained bunkbeds, with soldiers sleeping on mattresses under blankets, in their underwear, right before a big battle.Everyone dying at the Somme aside from out two protagonists, who are then free to wander around the battlefield.A West Indies Regiment corporal commanding British privates (err, nope, not in WW1, really, that could never have happened) for a prisoner escort through a miraculously untouched British-looking pine forest just behind the lines. Apparently the German lines were just beyond the untouched wood. If you only know one thing about WW1, it's that there were parallel lines of trenches from the North Sea to the Swiss border, so the idea that the German trenches were just beyond a wood IN THE BRITISH REAR is totally, ridiculously laughable.

grantss Bland and superficial.This drama series looks at World War 1 from the perspective of a few British and German soldiers and civilians - the fighting, the effects on families and relationships, the home front. Covers the entire duration of the war (1914-18).Had the potential to be a WW1 version of Band of Brothers, but falls very far short. Not engaging at all - you don't know much about the characters. Character development is quite superficial. As a result you don't get that feeling of camaraderie that was so essential to Band of Brothers.Plot development - the series just lurches from one scene to another. There is very attempt to link the series to actual historic events or create a sense of historic relevance or accuracy.Not very realistic in its battle scenes either. Certainly nothing like the terrors and mass casualties that actually occurred in the trench warfare of WW1.For a much better, grittier and far more realistic portrayal of WW1 from a soldier's perspective watch the mini-series "ANZACs" (1985) instead.

TurboarrowIII Overall I found this a bit disappointing and not helped by the time it was shown as it couldn't be more graphic.It tells the story of 2 men from either side fighting in WW1. The acting was very good I thought and the attention to detail was fine. However, I found it difficult to get really involved as it seemed to jump a bit between both sides.The ending was particularly disappointing and I thought contrived with both of the main characters meeting in no mans land while trying to repair damaged barbed wire. The fact that they then end up fighting and killing each other minutes before the war ends was a bit gimmicky and predictable.So overall not the greatest although it did convey how awful it must have been to fight in the war as well as the despair of seeing so many friends die. Spoiled by the contrived and quite predictable ending I thought.

Adams5905 This is just awful-I appreciate that the time slot will constrain exactly what the film-makers can show, with the gore, the filth, the disease, and the horror all being toned down (although they don't seem to have the same qualms about showing sex), but the production is riddled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies-modern language (the term 'girlfriend' was unknown) and modern accents (I've yet to meet a German who speaks with an Estuarine accent, especially one from rural Germany), a complete glossing-over of both sides' arguments (whether right or wrong) for going to war, apart from a rather trite comment about the Belgians being 'our' friends, no general explanation of the real time situations in which the two volunteers find themselves (this may be a way of illustrating the common soldier's frustration with lack of information, but as a device for stimulating empathy and interest in younger viewers, it fails abysmally), and a maudlin obsession with sugar-coating even the bitterest pill... This is not supposed to be a Barbara Cartland novel, but an interpretation of the brutal realities of early 20th century warfare, and it's effect on its participants.The BBC has concentrated on it's PC agenda, showing the mêlée from both sides, and deliberately avoiding any specific finger-pointing, but in doing so, it has completely obliterated any chance of showing real human emotion and partisanship. Nationalism may be unfashionable today, but it was one of the major motivational factors used by both sides in recruiting to their cause. If this is supposed to be a vaguely factual account of the events from 1914-1918 (and as has been pointed out elsewhere, why does the strap-line talk about "spanning the five years of the First World War"), it shouldn't be prejudiced by modern sensibilities. My forbears fought on both sides of the Great War-this simplistic, dumbed-down soap opera is an insult to all of them. I shall keep watching until the end of the week, if only to see how much worse it can get, and shall append further brickbats as and when necessary-this was yet another waste of licence-payers' money!..