I love this movie so much

Instant Favorite.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I am confident that I have never before started a review by complimenting the set designers. Comparing the vintage still photos of soldiers in World War I trenches shown at the beginning of the movie to the trenches in film itself, you can see that somebody with an eye for detail recreated the look of the trench and the costume designers did a good job with the men's uniforms. The bad news is that that is one of this movie's few strong points. For example, the view of no man's land (NML) - the ground between the opposing trenches - shows a green field. It should look like a brown, pock-marked wasteland, which has been captured in many other WW I movies.The whole effect of "The Trench" is that of a filmed stage play. It could easily be transferred to the stage without losing much and maybe even gaining something. That is to say, the movie is not opened up much. Still, as a WW I buff, I enjoyed it.The actors are good, and the outline of the story is illustrative of typical situations in the war. However, the specific dialogue might be a little too 1999 rather than 1916. The film does remind us that wars are fought by men who are still boys and concerned about the things young men are obsessed by. One general situation that jumps out is the promise to the men that they would go into the enemy trenches after bombardment and after previous waves of a British attack and would not encounter any living enemy. (Mopping up, as my WW-II-veteran father called it.) But this was a typical false promise of the strategy used by both sides because the defenders would always cover themselves adequately so a majority would survive the bombardment, and they would almost always be able to get reinforcements into the trenches faster than attackers could make it across NML, and the preliminary bombardment would 1) warn the defenders an attack was coming and 2) chew up the ground making it harder for the attackers to cross, including merely rearranging the barbed wire instead of cutting through it. The result was that being the defender was always advantageous, and being the attacker was always disadvantageous in trench warfare. That's why most of the battle lines on the Western Front remained static for about four years.I would recommend this movie as worth seeing for world war buffs and Daniel Craig fans, although it likely won't be anyone's favorite movie.

This movie is an excellent dramatization of what it must have like to be a soldier in the trenches on the Western Front prior to a major attack. The waiting seemed interminable, which added to stress of knowing that you may be killed. The movie shows that the soldiers really have no idea why the war is being fought. Unlike World War Two, which was ideologically driven, World War One was fought for reasons that are less clear. This movie provides a microcosm of what the conditions were all along the front. The trenches (at least those dug by the British), were little more than extended fox holes, intended for temporary use only. That soldiers were required to stay days and even weeks in those mud pits is appalling, yet true. That the British soldiers put up with these conditions with mutiny, unlike the French soldiers, is a testament to their discipline and loyalty. Tragically, for many, it was not enough to save their lives. As the movie shows, once in No-Man's Land, the bullets from the enemy machine guns did not discriminate as to their targets. Plans can go wrong, and this movie they go grievously wrong.

I tend to agree with most comments about this film, which I only caught up with recently. The acting is decent, but the script, the set, the anachronistic swearing and the general lack of any feel for the time makes it difficult to watch without sighing heavily. I mainly decided to comment because I scrolled down to find a comment from someone in New York who says this was 'a conventional continuation of the British obsession with World War I as being the most symbolic war'. I wouldn't disagree with that, but she then mentions three films to back up this view: All Quiet on the Western Front (an American film based on a novel by a German, about the German army), Paths of Glory (a film made by an American about the French army) and Gallipoli (made by an Australian about the Australian experience in the Dardanelles). I do think we see this war as symbolic here in the UK, but I don't think we're the only ones.

This was part of Channel 4's Lost Generation First World War season, and it was a huge mistake to show this so soon after their own very good drama-doc about the Somme. It was a mistake to show it at all. Novelist William Boyd is a terrible film director and screenwriter who has no real grip on his subject. Instead of taking a fresh look at the run up to the battle, he uses every old cliché you've seen before in the lips of every old stereotype you've seen before. Most of the cast are so bad I've forgotten their names. Only Daniel Craig and Julian Rhind Tutt come out with any credit. Very badly photographed too, with the trench clearly an interior and far too clean. Just terrible. Channel 4 should have shown something like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, which hasn't been on telly in years.