JOURNEY’S END Cert: 12A 1hr 47mins
There’s no doubt we are on familiar muddy, sandbag-lined and barbed-wire-entangled ground with the First World War drama Journey’s End, but the new film version still manages to have a power and poignancy that will break all but the hardest of hearts.
And that’s because, while it clearly has nothing like the budget or visual effects that Steven Spielberg lavished on War Horse, it does have two very important things going for it: perfect timing and a deeply moving authenticity.
We are just weeks away from the 100th anniversary of the Spring Offensive, the German counter-attack of 1918 that might have changed the outcome of the war and is absolutely central to events here.
Raleigh (Asa Butterfield), a fresh-faced young man just out of public school, who is so keen to get to the action at the front line that he marches into the general’s office and begs for it
As for authenticity, the film is based on the oft-revived play written by R C Sherriff, who fought in the war himself and was wounded at Passchendaele in 1917. This was a man who knew the horror of which he wrote and, even all these decades later, that first-hand experience still comes horrifyingly through. Indeed, when he wrote the play in 1928, Sherriff set the template for the many WWI dramas to come.
It’s the centenary, however, that gives the film its contemporary power, providing a significant moment to reflect on the bravery and sacrifice of an entire generation.
Part of that generation comes in the form of Raleigh (Asa Butterfield), a fresh-faced young man just out of public school, who is so keen to get to the front line that he marches into the general’s office and begs for it. It helps that the general is his uncle.
The trenches were filthy, foul-smelling and rat-infested. As for his fellow officers, they’re a million miles from the brave and gallant warriors that Raleigh was expecting
Despite the older man’s grave misgivings – the front has been awash with rumours of a counter-attack for weeks – he grants his nephew his wish. Raleigh arrives in the trenches, just as C Company moves in for its monthly six-day stint at the front.
Will the German attack come while Captain Stanhope and his men are in residence?
Everything Raleigh thought he knew about war is soon proved wrong. The trenches are filthy, foul-smelling and rat-infested. As for his fellow officers, they’re a million miles from the brave and gallant warriors he was expecting.
Paul Bettany is excellent as the older officer Lieutenant Osborne, who is fondly referred to as ‘uncle’ by his younger colleagues. He’s about the only sane one there
Hibbert (Tom Sturridge) is feigning illness in an attempt to be sent home, the working-class Trotter (Stephen Graham) is simply counting the days, while the war-weary Captain Stanhope (Sam Claflin), a boyhood hero of Raleigh’s from school, is glugging down the whisky like there’s no tomorrow. Which, of course, there might not be. For any of them.
The film is directed by Saul Dibb, best known for his 2014 adaptation of Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Française. But it’s one that, as soon as Toby Jones appears as the servant-cook Mason and we all instantly think ‘Baldrick!’, I worry may be ignored or taken less seriously.
Which would be a real shame, as there is some fine acting on display. Claflin, so good in last year’s WWII drama Their Finest, gives an entirely different performance here, as the brooding, broken and yet still dutiful Stanhope, a man who was decorated for bravery at Vimy Ridge but, a year later, won’t go home on leave because he doesn’t want people to see ‘how shot I am’.
Excellent, too, is Paul Bettany as the older officer Osborne, who is fondly referred to as ‘uncle’ by his younger colleagues. He’s about the only sane one there but, vitally, also Stanhope’s friend and confidant.
Inevitably, there is a sense of looming disaster from the outset, a sense that only multiplies when the top brass – safely behind the lines – decide the only thing that will clarify German intentions is a raiding party to capture an informer.
Mounting it under the cover of darkness would obviously be the sensible thing to do, but that might upset the colonel’s dinner. So a daytime raid it is; it’s the sort of less-than-cunning plan that surely even Baldrick would see through.
Rarely can a simple ‘Cheerio’ have been more powerful or pitiful. It echoes down the decades.
SECOND SCREEN
Phantom Thread (15)
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Roman J Israel, Esq (12A)
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Lies We Tell (15)
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In Winchester (15)
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Den Of Thieves (15)
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Daniel Day-Lewis, already a three-time Oscar winner, says he has now retired from film acting. If that’s true, he not only signs off in quiet style but gives himself a sporting chance of landing a fourth Academy Award, with another typically intense and meticulously prepared performance in Phantom Thread.
Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a couturier working in Fifties London. His fastidious, well-ordered life is disturbed when he falls for a German waitress, Alma (Vicky Krieps). But is there room for a woman in his life? Especially given the prickly relationship he already enjoys with his strictly no-nonsense sister (Lesley Manville).
The frocks, period setting and acting are all exquisite, and both Day-Lewis and Manville deserve their Oscar nominations. But be warned: the screenplay is heading somewhere dark, unexpected and ultimately disappointing.
Roman J Israel, Esq is a rambling mess of a film that sees Denzel Washington playing a former civil-rights activist who, perhaps held back by his autistic tendencies or poor wardrobe choices, has spent the past 40 years as a behind-the-scenes lawyer at a law firm that has always put ideals before profit.
And then his front-man partner has a heart attack. Will Roman return to his radical roots or sell out to the high-profile law firm run by the super-slick Colin Farrell? After a confusing while, I was past caring.
Lies We Tell feels like an updated version of Mona Lisa from 1986, with Gabriel Byrne playing the faithful driver, Donald, who ends up driving the lovely Amber, played by Sibylla Deen, around following the death of his boss (Harvey Keitel), with whom Amber had been conducting an affair. There’s lots of atmosphere and dramatic potential here, but tangled story-telling and jump-cut editing combine to ensure it’s never quite realised.
In Winchester stars Helen Mirren as the ageing matriarch of an arms company who is convinced that her sprawling mansion is haunted by those killed by its wares
In Winchester an improbably cast Helen Mirren plays the ageing matriarch of an arms company who is convinced that her sprawling mansion is haunted by those killed by its wares. It’s essentially a things-that-go-bump-in- the-night-in-a-spooky-old-house film and it does deliver a few decent scares, although the frights diminish with time, as does the quality of Mirren’s performance.
Den Of Thieves is an indulgent, overblown and unpleasantly violent thriller that pits hard-drinking LA cop Gerard Butler against a crack team of clever but seriously gun-toting bank robbers. Derivative, nasty and at least half an hour too long, it’s one of the worst films you’ll see all year.