DVD/Blu-ray Mini-Review - Journey's End (12A)

They all feel like we do... But they stick at it. It's the only thing a decent man can do.

The Gist: It's September 1918, and a company of soldiers arrives at the front-line trenches near St Quentin on the Western Front, days before an expected German offensive. They are led by Captain Stanhope, a respected officer reduced to a whiskey-sodden husk of the man he once was by years of gruelling combat. Tension within the officers' dugout increases with the arrival of Raleigh, a young lad who hero-worshipped Stanhope when they attended the same school, and who has used family connections to get himself posted alongside his boyhood idol. With the enemy attack imminent and orders not to retreat under any circumstance, both officers and men must find ways of dealing with their dreadful likely fate.

The Juice: Journey's End is adapted from the classic 1928 play by R. C. Sherriff along with its later novelisation. Screenwriter Simon Reade pares down the dialogue of the play, while retaining the essence of the characters along with the most powerful and tender dramatic moments. Under Saul Dibb's well-judged direction, it creates a truly cinematic retelling. The interiors are rendered claustrophobic through the use of natural light (candle-flame flickering on characters' taut faces); then the camera emerges to go winding around the sludge of the trenches, peering occasionally via periscope over the top to the devastation of No Man's Land. The day-to-day grimness of trench life is memorably captured.

A magnificent ensemble cast portrays the soldiers' fear, boredom and camaraderie. Sam Claflin (My Cousin Rachel, Their Finest) is terrific as Stanhope - glimpses of compassion and a sense of natural leadership still discernible within his sardonic, traumatised soul. Asa Butterfield is perfectly cast as Raleigh, the wide-eyed schoolboy idealism being gradually leeched from his face. Stephen Graham and Toby Jones bring humour and humanity as Scouse career soldier Trotter and resourceful chef Mason respectively. But it's Paul Bettany who proves most moving, as second-in-command Osborne - father-figure to all and the definition of grace under pressure. Pipe clenched between his teeth, he's the embodiment of English stoicism and kindness (and even more courageous than he was in the recent Avengers movie). Very quietly he'll break you heart.

The Judgement: 8/10. Journey's End combines the Sherriff play's poetry with the murk and mire of the trenches, embedding us there with its mostly reluctant heroes. This is less a tale of active combat than of waiting for the inevitable - and of clinging to your humanity in the face of it. It's about nobility and decency (and rage and cowardice too) right in the mouth of madness. Impeccably crafted and beautifully played, this will go down as one of the year's most poignant films.