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The Trench on DVD (1999)

The Trench cover art
Average rating: 57%
1121013208713
2.5
from 346 members
 
Starring: Paul Nicholls, Daniel Craig, Danny Dyer, Julian Rhind-Tutt, James D'Arcy, Tam Williams
Director: William Boyd
Studio: ENTERTAINMENT IN VIDEO
Run time: 112 mins
Certificate: 15
Genres: Drama
Languages: English
Released: 01/05/2000

Brief synopsis of The Trench

THE TRENCH tells the story of a group of young British soldiers on the eve of the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916, the worst defeat in British military history. Against this ill-fated backdrop, the movie depicts the soldiers' experience as a mixture of boredom, fear, panic, and restlessness, confined to a trench on the front lines. At the center of the troops is 17-year-old Billy MacFarlane (Paul Nicholls), who alongside his older brother, Eddie (Tam Williams), has volunteered for service. Like their fellow squad members, they are boys dressed as men. Their survival is in the hands of war-hardened Saergeant Winter (Daniel Craig) and bookish Lieutenant Hart (Julian Rhind-Tutt). However, when word comes that the squad will join the first wave of the attack, they all face an equal fate.
Novelist and screenwriter William Boyd's directorial debut steers clear of epic pronouncements about the pointlessness of war. Instead, he illuminates in glowing detail the characters perched at the edge of the abyss. With a minimum of bloodshed, the movie seeks to capture a momentous event through a narrow lens. Watching the men march stiffly into battle, it becomes clear there is no such thing as "modern" warfare.

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Critics Reviews

Rating of 2 stars out of 5 Radio Times

William Boyd's directorial debut is a sincere but stagey attempt to explore the psychological pressures weighing on diverse tommies awaiting their first day on the Somme. Although the camera restlessly suggests the cramped, primitive conditions, Tony Pierce-Roberts's glassy photography too often highlights the atmospheric shortcomings of the sets. Similarly, the actors rally to the colours, but their commitment can't disguise the fact that the script is populated solely by stock combat characters: the naive private, chirpy cockney, gritty sergeant and spineless officer. There are too many examples — Journey's End, RC Sheriff's classic 1930 study of human frailty set amid the futility of the Great War, for one — that portray a similar situation so much better.

Time Out

The Somme valley, 1916: while a major offensive is being planned against the Germans, a reduced British force holds the... Read more on www.timeout.com

New York Times

"...[A] stirring World War I drama..."

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Members Reviews

Reviews Voted Most Helpful

Rated - 1 starsDreadfully unconvincing

Ferraz from London , 05/12/2004

Full of farcical inaccuracies, cringe-worthy dialogue and all the character cliches in the book (honest private Tommy, brutal Sarge with a soft heart, posh Officer who's really a bit of a coward), 'The Trench' would barely have been passable as a children's television dramatisation.

According to this film, in the days before the battle of the Somme, there were miles of unmanned front-line trench for soldiers to run up and down, unimpeded - each side fired 3 or 4 shells each, and when the troops did go over the top, they advanced over a well-kept lawn. News to me.

  7 out of 7 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 1 starsOh Dear

knobby from ESSEX , 24/11/2004

I have to say what waste of talent in all aspects. The production budget on this film must have cost £100.00. Bad sets, boring story,ZZzzzzzz

I take some interest in WW1, and I know that before the Battle of the Somme started, there was a huge bombardment of German trenches, over a million shells fired. Yet all is fairly quiet in the trench.

It does not make you experience the horror and fear in the trenches.

The casts uniforms were spotless, faces clean. The officers all stereotypes.

In all, a poor reflection of life in the trenches. A film only for true Somme spotters.

  7 out of 8 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 2 starsglass fibre trench doesn't seem real

dafadddu from the north will rise again , 07/07/2004

You never believe this film, the trench seems way too clean and squalor free, a different grainier film stock and better grading could have helped, plus sallower makeup cos all the company seem in excellent rude health. One unferocious rat was all they gave us for squalor and no filthy mud/latrine/costumes. And the cast don't seem remotely like conscripts, they loll about with no sense of imminent danger 400 yards away.

  4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 4 starsGive it a go!!

Cheryl Wilcox from Staffs, England. , 17/02/2006

I was a bit worried about this film after reading some of the other reviews but I have to say that at times it was extremely moving. I had no problems with it being entirely filmed in the trench and was not interested in the angle of the cameras etc. People read reviews just to get a gist of a film and to see if it's for them not to find out all the ins and outs of the director's bowel movements, as so many 'reviewees' seem to think. It was a very good film which is very likely to have been true to life. (I wasn't there at the time so I couldn't say for sure! - but from archive material I've seen I'd say it was spot on.) The acting wasn't bad and it just all goes to show what a waste of time war is and that innocent 'boys' were made to 'commit suicide' back then by the bigwigs in government - just as they still are today. What an incredible waste of life! Watch this film, it's really good.

  3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
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Most Recent Reviews

Rated - 1 starsDreadfully unconvincing

Ferraz from London , 05/12/2004

Full of farcical inaccuracies, cringe-worthy dialogue and all the character cliches in the book (honest private Tommy, brutal Sarge with a soft heart, posh Officer who's really a bit of a coward), 'The Trench' would barely have been passable as a children's television dramatisation.

According to this film, in the days before the battle of the Somme, there were miles of unmanned front-line trench for soldiers to run up and down, unimpeded - each side fired 3 or 4 shells each, and when the troops did go over the top, they advanced over a well-kept lawn. News to me.

  7 out of 7 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 3 starsThe Pity of War

A customer from Nottingham, United Kingdom. , 27/06/2005

'My subject is War?, wrote Owen, ?And the Pity of War. The poetry is in the pity?.

I doubt that any film-maker can catch the horrors of World War One as the poets have and, though there are moments that capture the sense of boredom, of innocence and naivety and of sudden horror, this film somehow fails to convey the experience as one is made to feel it by Owen, Rupert Brooke and Sasoon :- 'The War Poets'.

The stereotypyes are not offensive because this was a war fought in a much smaller world where stereotypes were forged out of class and patriotism and a complete lack of media compared to today.

For a film intended to be 'Overpowering' it failed. However it was a sincere attempt to bring an honesty and integrity to the subject of war and is worth renting for the short features that accompany it. So watch this film until it's shocking conclusion, watch the feature and then turn back to owen who captures in one stanza the truth that 'The Trench' hints at but fails to convey nearly so fully.

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us...

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent...

Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient...

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

But nothing happens.

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful
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