Genres

Visitors Review

2012-05-25 14:47:25

The Trench

If you like World War one, you will enjoy this title, but if you are into a real historic view of Trench warfare you will find faults. Acting is solid, but the sets are too clean,even for early in the war. This production seems more stage play, than movie. If you can rent it first, see it before you decide to buy it.

Darren O'Shaughnessy 2012-05-25 02:21:44

VERY AVERAGE WORLD WAR I FLICK

Sombre look at young British soldiers during WWI, on the eve of the BattleOf The Somme, when 60,000 of them met with a grisly finish in a single dayof madness. With virtually the entire film confined to a small stretch ofthe British trenches, this feels tremendously confined. While the decisionto go small-scale was probably intended to induce a sense ofclaustrophobiain the viewers, it succeeds only in making the film feel cheap andunder-produced. The end is all too predictable, but in films such as thisitusually is. What makes a doom-destined warfare movie work -- such asGALLIPOLI -- is the strength of characterisation and the slow build-up oftension before the final slaughter. Here, the characters are likeable andinteresting enough, but rather stereotyped and not overly fascinating.Thisisn't a bad movie, just very average in all departments, and withabsolutelynothing new to offer. For a great movie which offers a real taste of whatWWI must have felt like, you should check out the original version of ALLQUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, by which high standard this film'sshort-comingscan be truly judged.

adrianj 2012-05-16 09:17:43

Quality performances make a simple film powerfully effective

Who would choose to make their debut a WWI character piece set within theconfines of one trench? For his first directorial effort William Boyd hasnot tried to run before he can walk, and Paul Nicholls in his first releasedfeature plays a role he clearly empathises with.The relative inexperience of Boyd is evident in the modesty of theproduction - no expensive effects, no epic locations - but that actuallyworks well in this study of young men trying to cope with the unthinkablehorror that characterised the World War One battlefield.Cooped up for days in dreadful conditions, the various characters - thenaive (Nicholls), the intellectual (D'Arcy), the objectionable (Dyer), theloveable fattie (Strachan) - at turns argue with and provide support foreach other, but at the end of the day have to face almost certain death ontheir own and in their own way.This is not a great film, it doesn't quite provide a strong enough focus tohelp you empathise with the characters, for the most part it feels like afilmed play, but as a film it is able to provide moments of real visualpower such as the final scenes as the boys finally leave the trenches toface the German guns.For those last few minutes, the realisation of what they are about to dohits you hard, you can really sense the terror that they must havefelt.Despite it's "theatrical" feel at times, and the constraints of its setting,this is a fine and evocative film, with an excellent cast. Paul Nicholls,Danny Dyer and James D'Arcy are not alone in giving faultless performances,but the star of the film must be Daniel Craig, who is superb as Sgt Winter,a man who has survived the battlefield once, but knows his luck is about torun out.

2012-05-15 17:35:18

Pretty Bad!!

The expectations for this film embraced the word, "epic," but all-in-all, this one missed the boat by orders of magnitude. As a film that was likely intended to show the "reality" of life during trench warfare in World War I, it is an utter failure. SO many missed opportunities here! This film came about as close to accurately portraying trench warfare as "Apocalypse Now" did in accurately describing the Vietnam War, which was positively ludicrous. In fact, this film is so bad that it makes the very limited combat scenes and trench warfare vignettes in "Sergeant York" look like an epic.

2012-05-09 21:15:51

for what it is, it was pretty good

Reading the other reviews here, I had to post one myself to defend it. The movie has its problems, but some of the complaints are unjustified. To say the ending was a rip-off of some other war movie is just silly -- how else could it have ended? This was the Somme. You don't make a movie about the first day of the Somme if you want anything other than a massacre. To the person complaining about No Man's Land being a grassy meadow. There was a place called Serre where the attacking British DID cross a grassy meadow. The grass was so long, as the wounded men fell, some of the others thought there'd been an order to get down, and so they did too, only to find the others wounded or dead. To the guy complaining about the lack of homoerotic content, all I can say is, oh well. Not everything's always about sex. Movies about battles like this, you can look at from a big picture perspective or you can zoom in for a close look at a group of individuals. This movie goes for the close-up. It's not trying to be anything else. This is a movie about the strain of the long hours waiting for a major offensive to begin, for a bunch of young guys, most of whom were new to the war. It's dumb to criticize it for failing to be something else. I thought it did a pretty good job of portraying the situation. The boredom, the fear, how difficult it would be to sleep or eat or turn off your brain during those long hours. The ways the men might snipe at one another over little things due to frayed nerves. The relationship between the men, the sergeant and the lieutenant was subtle but I think well-done. My complaints are that it goes about a half hour too long. The trench looked mighty tidy to me too. I had trouble believing that a shell big enough to blow 2 men to bits wouldn't have done more damage to the structure of the trench there. Also most of these guys would have known each other from civilian life; the British army had a lot of "Pals Battalions" where guys from the same village or area joined up and served together. Most of these guys should have known one another. I am pretty sure I saw a guy light a cigarette with a Bic-type lighter and I'm pretty sure they would not have had something like that. I think for a look at "trench life" for a bunch of newbies about to go over the top for the first time, it was pretty good.

2012-05-09 01:37:05

I threw my copy out

An enormous waste of money! The director of this mess put a bunch of spoiled unlikeable kids from today into nice clean trenches and called it the Battle of the Somme. I kept waiting and waiting for the characters to get on with it, but they just kept talking and talking in incomprehensible accents (no subtitles provided). None of them appeared to have any military training at all and none of them even got dirty. When the great final attack finally happened, it was just a couple dozen guys walking in a pretty green field with the occasional explosion and when somebody was hit, there was little "whifft" sound and the audience was treated to a slow-motion or a stop-frame "death".Message to film makers with no combat experience: bullets make a loud bang when they hit somebody, sounding a lot like a pine board breaking. I've heard a lot of gunfire in my life and it never went "whifft". The guy who directed this thing ought to be barred from film making until he serves in some rifle company for a couple of years as penance. Wish I could get my money back and the time I wasted watching this "movie".

Boba_Fett1138 2012-05-06 11:23:01

Fair enough little WW I production.

When looking at this movie, it becomes obvious that it didn't had avery high budget. Not only its settings are kept cheap and simple butalso the overall style and atmosphere of the movie. Nevertheless themovie is good enough and also serves its purpose well enough.In my opinion it's always interesting to watch a movie about WW I,since it's a subject that doesn't get much lighted in movies too often.It usually are small European productions like this one that handle thesubject. It in my opinion makes WW I an underused part of history inthe movie making business.It's a slowly told movie, set purely in British trench during WW I, inFrance, in the days before the battle of the Somme. One of thebloodiest battles in human history, with over one million casualties.Because the story is slow and set mainly at one location, it allows themovie to deepen its characters out and allow the actors to do their joband carry the movie.It's however definitely true that the movie is filled with far too manycharacters to put in a 100 minutes short movie. I'm sure the story andall of its characters would had worked out fine in a mini-series butit's a bit too much to put in a movie. It has as a result that none ofthe characters ever get really interesting- or fleshed out good enoughto care about them. It makes the movie emotionally flat and even alsoquite boring at certain points, also since not really that muchinteresting is happening in the movie.The dialog and situations are also far too cliché to consider them goodor original. The movie offers very little surprises and it makes "TheTrench" perhaps a bit of an obsolete movie to watch.The actors still do their very best to carry the movie to an higherlevel. Daniel Craig is really superb in his role and he provides themovie still with some much needed emotions. It was also fun to seeCillian Murphy in a small and early role. Obviously too small to reallymake a lasting impression though.And than about the end battle. Well, when looking at this movie youshould know better than to expect a big spectacular ending. If youalready watched the first 90 minutes of this movie, you just knowyou're plain wrong to expect suddenly something big and spectacular. Soin my opinion the ending just felt right and it was suiting with therest of the movie. But obviously, it doesn't do much justice to thereal battle of the Somme that was one of the biggest of WW I and alsoone of the bloodiest in human history. This obviously really doesn'tshow on screen however.Good enough to kill some time with. Just don't expect anythingspectacular or emotionally powerful.6/10

2012-05-06 08:04:34

Good for Costumes; Staging

As a film, it's a weak jumble of poor directing, and I feel bad for the actors, many of whom gave earnest performances, but bad directing can make even the best look foolish. WHERE THIS FILM SHINES, is the costuming and the construction details of the trenches and bunkers. If you're in the theatre and you are dealing with a period piece, watch this for the uniforms and the sets.

2012-05-05 05:09:18

Slice of life; doom without much homomasculine drama

This movie seemed like a filmed stage play from an off-Broadway experimental theater in the 1960s. This does not mean it is a bad drama, but that its classical unities of time, place, and action are theatrical rather than filmic. The characters are the same stock characters always found in war movies from "All Quiet on the Western Front" to "Platoon." In fact, one of its sniper scenes is straight out of the last scene in "All Quiet."This does not mean it is bad so much as it means that without explosive action the military genre becomes a talkfest--in this case between teenagers who don't know each other and therefore have not much to say. In the 60s, plays like this cozied up to homosexuality, which "Trench" fails to do, even though the film stars gay icon Daniel Craig who is the calling card in the cast.[...]Anyway, this mise en scene happens years after Walt Whitman and his revealing Calamus soldier poems, and a few years after "Mrs. Dalloway" and "Gods and Monsters" did "takes" on gay men fighting WWI.Also we are now in, hello, the 21st century when the love that dare not speak its name fairly shouts and it's time to present the unspoken past of WWI and its buried soldier-lovers. Such a tactic would, at least, have given the plotless plot some edge. If same-period "Maurice" could show same-sex lovers, then why not uncloset these lives in the trenches? These homomasculine buddy-buddy war stories of chums who enlist together, train together, fight together, die together are coming even out of Iraq.As presented, the film channels all of its anxieties about love and death and comradeship into huge amounts of smoking where inhaling means one thing and exhaling means another and lighting a match means everything. If this had been a non-smoking "Trench," there would have been no stage business at all.The whole film is lensed in a virtual general shot. Too bad. Some close-ups would have helped, particularly of Daniel Craig, whose eyes deserve two Academy Awards.All in all, if you like theater, you may enjoy the one-dimensial "Trench," but accept it for what it is. Don't fault it because it is not a high-budget action film. For fun, do a double feature of "Trench" with "Lafayette Escadrille" which is also a little known WWI film full of very handsome, very blond men.

Madeleine 2012-05-05 00:04:32

A good insight into the trenches of WW1

I thought that this film was very well done. There were quite a lot ofcharacters which at first was slightly confusing; however as the filmprogressed, the different characteristics of each soldier became veryimportant to the story as a whole. Each soldier had different likableaspects to them and this worked very well.Although obviously it is hard to know what trench life was like duringthe First World War, this film felt very realistic and not overdramatised at all. I think 'The Trench' was an extremely good portrayalof WW1 and very moving, especially towards the end. I would recommendthis to anyone who wants to learn more about actual trench life ratherthan the warfare itself.

2012-05-02 13:26:28

TRENCH

This review is from: The Trench (DVD) Daniel Craig gives another great performance in this historical drama. I found the cockney accents a little difficult to understand at times, but all the young actors are strong in showing their naievete and being scared in war. Theres a doom that hangs over the story that you just know things are not going to turn out well. And then one bad thing happens after the other....But a soldier does what he must do. Very heartbreaking.I also enjoyed the history lesson as I was not familiar with this episode of British war time.

pafcollins 2012-05-01 19:39:27

Poor and clichéd fare

I tend to agree with most comments about this film, which I only caughtup with recently. The acting is decent, but the script, the set, theanachronistic swearing and the general lack of any feel for the timemakes it difficult to watch without sighing heavily. I mainly decidedto comment because I scrolled down to find a comment from someone inNew York who says this was 'a conventional continuation of the Britishobsession with World War I as being the most symbolic war'. I wouldn'tdisagree with that, but she then mentions three films to back up thisview: All Quiet on the Western Front (an American film based on a novelby a German, about the German army), Paths of Glory (a film made by anAmerican about the French army) and Gallipoli (made by an Australianabout the Australian experience in the Dardanelles). I do think we seethis war as symbolic here in the UK, but I don't think we're the onlyones.

Theo Robertson 2012-04-30 12:01:48

I Did Have Reservations At The Start ....

.... because the opening title sequence is very bland . Compare it to theshocking title sequence of the 1960s BBC documentary THE GREAT WAR . As thefilm goes on we`re introduced to the characters and I couldn`t help noticingthat one is Southern English , a couple are Northern English , a couple areJocks , a couple are Irish while the sarge is a scouser . I`m sorry but Iwas convinced that British army infantry regiments of the period werecomposed of " Pals battalions " , that is battalions composed entirely ofmen from the same home town . Take for instance the 16th battalion of TheRoyal Scots which was formed in one week and was called " The Heartsbattalion " because it was composed mainly of supporters of Hearts footballclub . The 16th Royal Scots even had 16 Hearts players in its ranks so Idon`t believe for a moment that any British army infantry platoon was asregionally mixed as the one here The more THE TRENCH goes on the more I found myself questioning the accuracyof the movie especially its mood and its sense of time and place . A Britishmade trench in France in 1916 . Since when did the Brits build trenches likethe one seen here ? It even has a concrete floor that the Germans would havebeen proud of which seems to go against I`ve seen in photographic evidence .The film also has an anachronistic cynical air , what on the eve of theSomme ? The British troops had witnessed day upon day of hellish bombardmentof the German positions and a lot of British soldiers had begun to feelrather sorry for Jerry , and no one but no one in the British lines had anyreason to doubt anything less than a swift , spectacular British victory .Of course one day and 20,000 dead British soldiers later changed thesethoughts , in fact some historians describe the date 1st of July 1916 " Theday British idealism died " . One final point - As at least one othercommentator mentioned THE TRENCH contains a large amount of swear words . Ithas been documented that one criticism by the real life survivors of BAND OFBROTHERS was that the HBO/BBC drama contained too much swearing and thatpeople in the 1940s used far less profane words than people use nowadays .I`m inclined to believe them and I`m also inclined to believe people in 1916probably swore less than people in the 1940s so I doubt if the men in thetrenches used the " F " word in every sentence Unfortunately who German bullets didn`t claim on that grim day have beenkilled by the passing of time so the chances of someone who was therewriting into this site and telling us their opinion of THE TRENCH are veryremote . A pity because I`d be very interested what they thought of it . Asfor myself I found the ending moving ( How could it not be ? ) but the restis rather poor history and a rather poor film that seems to have homo eroticundertones

John Taylor 2012-04-29 17:57:13

A Brilliant piece of british film making

There are many superlatives to describe The Trench. Moving,heartrendering,eye opening and though provoking are some that come tomind.This film is a little gem that somehow got hidden away without any publicityand was shown on a satallite movie channel.I urge anybody to watch this brilliant drama, especially if they are unawareof what happened on july the 1st 1916 during the 1st worldwar.I must admit i was quite unaware of how bad things were and how young thesoldiers were.This superb film will give a you a moving insight into how crazythings were during World War 1 and how the army stood no chance atall.The acting is outstanding from Paul Nicholls and Daniel Craig as is theacting from the rest of the cast. The only critisism i have is the inclusionof the actor Danny Dyer who plays Dell. i have seen him before and his falsecockney acting is so over the top it spoils the scenes he isin.Dont let that put you of though, you must watch The Trench.9 out of 10.

Teknopete 2012-04-28 05:20:35

One of the worst war movies ever...

When I saw the DVD standing in the store, I though,finally a movieabout WWI, with Danile Craigh and it will be showing us the story ofthe first big push during the first great war.... NOT, it was more of aschool play, and a very boring one. The movie stays in the trench, orshall I say a very obvious indoor set and even the actors make up isbadly done. One actor looks more like the unknown guy of "Wham". Pleasedon't wake me up before you go go, but just let me sleep through thewhole movie. If you want to see a very good WWI movie, the lastbattalion will do the job. How this one ever got a rating of more tan 6? It blows my mind. All I can say is, I want my 6.95 euro's back that Ispend on this terrible movie! Any buyers :o) ?

fletch-27 2012-04-27 18:38:07

you've seen one trench, you've seen....

Actually a very good movie, although you don't exactly leave the cinema feeling good. Set in a trench just before the Battle of the Somme, this isa pretty accurate (as far as I can tell) rendition of what life waslike.The acting is universally of a very high standard, and personally I wouldsingle out the Sergeant who gives a great performance. The only flaws arethe setting which is confining and gives the feel of a stage play and theobvious comparisons to Gallipoli (a better film, but then a great film.) Definitely 8 out of ten. Try as i might the last Blackadder episode kept coming to mind as the filmneared it's the climax, which was a shame as this is a serious film,intelligently made and with an excellent point.

TrevorAclea 2012-04-26 08:31:58

A terrible waste of human lives, a terrible waste of celluloid

Set in the run up to the disastrous first day of the 1916 Battle of theSomme, The Trench isn't entirely worthless, but it's not a movie, morea filmed play (despite being written as a movie), and a very poor oneat that with that 1970s BBC For Schools television look. The decisionto shoot on a soundstage is particularly disastrous, since it neverlooks like anything but a soundstage, and this despite having a goodcinematographer (Tony Pierce-Roberts). The decision to never leave thetrench until the final scene doesn't really work, partially because wehave no indication of the world that awaits them, but largely becauseBoyd's finale is just too televisual to have any compensating shockvalue. The abrupt jump to exterior for the last couple of minutes (andvery tame they are too) is very noticeable, the film stocks and looksjust not matching at all. Borrowing the final image of Gallipoli aswell doesn't help.Characters constantly explain what they're doing to each other despitehaving been in the trench for several weeks or months; there's noimmediacy, no sense of danger, no sense of having to live in a fetid,claustrophobic open grave. Indeed, it's one of the most comfortableBritish trenches I've seen, with an absolutely level floor for the mostpart place. The soft barrage - the quietest I've ever heard for shellslanding 700 yards away - doesn't help. Boyd really doesn't have anyidea of the possibilities that cinema has to offer, either camera orsound. It's real problem, though, is that ultimately it's a polite,clean and determinedly inoffensive film about a dirty, ugly war.Pluses are some good performances, most notably Daniel Craig and PaulNicholls, the latter improving after a bland start to establish acredible screen presence. There are a couple of good scenes, too, butit doesn't really have the ring of truth or authenticity - the moodseems more influenced by hindsight than the actual mood in the run-upto the first day. Not only do you never feel you're there alongsidethem, but there's no sense of people caught up in, and disposed by themad rush of a cruel history beyond their control. There's no dread, nofear, just observation. The shortfall between the film Boyd thought hewas making and the bland one he did is made frighteningly apparent byhis interviews in the EPK included on the DVD.

TexasRedge 2012-04-26 02:17:51

I purchased a copy of the long slow boring film

I purchased a copy of this long, boring slow film after talking to amember of the Memphis Grizzlies NBA basketball team (who will remainnameless) on an airplane trip from Denver back to Memphis. He said itwas a great film and one that he enjoyed. I thought to myself thatsomeone of his stature has all the time in the world to watch all kindsof movies (during the basketball off season)... I was surprised to hearhim speak to me about his passion for war movies and how much herecommended this one.....he must've watched a different movie than I did. this movie started outlike it was going to be very good, but then no real story developed. Itdid have some good aspects such as the dirty and gritty movie set, therealistic lingo and the grueling sounds, and it is very historicallyaccurate... they did that stuff well in this movie. ...the problem withthis movie is that it just doesn't develop a story, and it turns into 2hours of nothing. ...I kept waiting for something to happen ..and itnever did.I had to purchase a copy of it because none of the video rental placeshad a copy to rent... don't buy this movie

2012-04-25 03:59:21

The Trench

This is an excellent movie for World War I buffs. Why? For one reason, there is little enough out there for the amateur historian of this period, and the depictions and language exchange are useful to understand trench warfare. This is not about character development to the ultimate degree. This is about a snapshot of history, and it is well done, for what it set out to achieve. And the price is right. Buy it, now.Several things are lacking, like the dry trenches (never happen) and the clean uniforms (Britain had been in the war for two years), but perfection would make it five stars, rather than four.Jim Minnoch

Monsieur Halifax 2012-04-24 21:54:36

Average

The Trench is an average film on its own genre. It's not too fancy andit's not too overwhelmingly bad. Probably the biggest fault of thismovie was low budget. You will not see very good sets and brilliantbattle scenes. Also it seems like they made the life in the trench abit too comfortable. The only problems the soldiers had living intrenches was boredom not rats and lice. It was too clean. Of coursewhat I know about that!Acting was quite good overall. Daniel Craig was very good choice in therole of Sergeant Winter and probably saved the movie. He is truly goodactor.Overall, The Trench is very average war film made with small budget.Not the total waste of time. But you haven't lost anything special ifyou haven't seen it. 5 out of 10