Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

juneebuggy Paul Gross wrote, directed and stars in this ambitious (yet still very CBC feeling) epic, following the exploits of the Canadian soldiers who fought in one of the key battles of World War 1 in 1917. The story follows Gross as a troubled veteran, his nurse girlfriend and a naïve boy who intersect first in Alberta and then through the bloody battle of Passchendaele.You can just tell that Paul Gross put his heart and soul into this and I really, really wanted to be impressed, finally getting the Canadian side of events after so many WW1 movies that just deal with the American or British. Unfortunately though its not great.Yeah it has its moments, it's visually impressive, the battle scenes are very well done, the trench warfare, the mud, the rain, the carnage and I got very caught up in the ending despite myself but this is also melodramatic at times, kinda choppy and (as I said) has a made for TV feel despite the big budget. Guys will be disappointed too because for the most part this is a love story.Still I am haunted by the ending, that final shot of the wooden cross in Calgary with the Bow river in the background infused with the white stone graves in France, beautiful. 11/16/14

mmcceng77 A collection of hackneyed war movie clichés...Gross' ultimate cash grab. I left the theatre after hurling Coke and popcorn at the screen. God what a disgusting waste of time. The problem with many Canadian films is, they seem to try too hard to emulate Hollywood. Give up! And: Gross..... Stop trying to tell us you have talent! The idea of having a guy dying on a cross of barbed wire. Jeeezus...... pathetic. . What a ludicrous idea! What were you thinking?? The idea of a romance being relevant to a war movie..ridiculous! You should have stuck to a theme more realistic than what you put out...like, showing men and mules knee deep in mud, sleeping in foul trenches for weeks at a time, and enduring meat - headed tactics dictated by senescent British generals who lived in relative luxury 20 miles away from the fighting.

jack-wallet This was and is one of the very best war-time films we have ever enjoyed. The writing and directing, we believe were great. Realistic dialogue and incredibly real special effects.It was and is one of the very best movies we have ever enjoyed. Although it has some all too heart-breaking moments that happen in war situations, there are beautiful moments of love and compassion. In particular, there is a scene in which a Canadian soldier is thrown onto a barbed-wire fence due to an explosion and he is suspended in a "crucifixion like" pose. Soldiers on both sides stop the battle long enough for the young soldier to be retrieved by the Canadian side. It is an extremely emotional scene - so well written and directed.Paul Gross should be commended for an outstanding film. We don't believe it has gotten the amount of attention it deserves.

wuxmup Here's what you'll need to believe - for starters - in order to enjoy this movie: 1. A Canadian soldier gets a medal - promptly - simply for bayoneting a German in the head.2. Though badly wounded, he deserts, is caught, and somehow winds up back in Canada even though he's being threatened with execution as a deserter.3. On top of that, all three of his brothers have already been killed (as in "Saving Private Ryan"), and when he's reported missing his mother "dies of a broken heart." And that's just the first fifteen minutes! (I left out the part where a geeky blue-collar kid has sex with the gorgeous daughter of Calgary's leading physician on a table in the newspaper office where he works - in super-prudish, pre-Pill 1917. And the daughter wears a see-through blouse to a formal dinner party. The word "passion" is prominently mentioned a couple of times.) There's an evil, cowardly English officer, who is a worse villain than any German. There's the hero's nurse sweetie who, in one night, kicks morphine cold-turkey with his help. And there's the fact that all four main characters wind up together at Passchendaele.Whether or not you've seen "The Passion (get it?) of the Christ," you won't be ready for the explosion that magically blows the geeky guy out of a German trench into an upright, barbed-wire-and-wooden-plank crucifixion. Honest! Then the hero crosses 200 yards of swampy No Man's Land under fire from a hundred German guns - unhurt except for blood across his forehead. Then he hauls the cross, with his pal still writhing, back to Canadian lines. A bloody miracle! You get two Christs instead of one! A German officer nods his head in sadness and approval.The evil Englishman has already been blown up by a different magic shell that leaves the half-dozen Canadians around him unfazed and untouched. He's just uttered the cowardly words, "If the enemy breaks through, we'll be in DANGER!" The final scene of endless crosses is ripped off from the moving finale of "Oh What a Lovely War!" (1969).There's more foolishness that I won't even mention.The battle scenes are effective. But there *is* that crucifixion thing.And you won't learn much about Passchendaele, except that it was awful. A postscript tells us that the Germans retook the ground a few months later, so the effort was futile. That's as close as this movie gets to being informative.The postscript doesn't mention, though, that Allied soldiers won the war, and as a result Germany became a democracy for a number of years - until Hitler showed up.This is bad soap opera. No more, no less. And girls - you get to see a guy's ass close up while he's having sex!