Before Dawn

This is a decent movie, broadly accurate although with a couple of clangers - some of the colloquialisms are post-2000, not post-1900. The back-and-forth cuts sort of work - they help tell the story, if using an obvious and well-tried method. Life in the trenches is convincing, although the 'cold' scenes did not seem quite cold enough - there's a moment of shaking, but what of being soaked through for days on end, in near freezing conditions? In some respects, the story of the misery of life in the trenches has been told (All Quiet On The Western Front), but it can never be told too many times. The acting and dialogue was understated but, I think, in keeping - Australians are not Americans. And for the idiot who wanted more battle scenes, war tends to be about long periods of boredom and discomfort interspersed with brief moments of unheroic and usually not very spectacular terror. Hollywood may have taught us something different but, with very few exceptions, it is wrong. 7/10.

My great grand father was a stretcher berar for the 44th and I have a lot of history with this unit. This movie did not do any justice and did not include anything the medics or other people did. The 44th did a raid one night my great grand father went with them as one of the medics. Now medics had no guns back then so remember that. They did this charge he killed two Germans in the opposite trench patched a guy up came back picked another mate from the middle over his shoulders and took him back to the allied lines. He was nominated for the vc but never got it due to the captain and the runner killed.in action. You need to follow from time of enlistment to the war to heroic deeds been done maybe someone getting the vc or something. If it was ever to made again it has to be done right or not at all. You.owe it to the men that fought who risked it all and to all that never made it home.

I don't agree with all the poor reviews of this movie. What aren't they seeing in this story that I see? I'm not sure. I watched this movie on my huge TV, with surround sound headphones up loud. The immersion of the sound and great picture for me plays a big role for how mich I enjoy a movie. I believe to fully buy in to a story you have to have an environment for immersion with little to no distractions. This in my opinion doubles the enjoyment factor. If i was watching this movie with loud cars driving by, people talking, distracting noise, forget it, watch it some other time. This is no brainless action movie where you can enjoy it with no sound or immerse yourself into the movie. Now, perhaps war movie fans went into this with expectations of great non stop action scenes. This movie was more story and less action. This is not to say there was no action, just not an unrealistic amount as you might find in say, a call of duty game. I found the movie to be real, in terms of believability. The story and characters were good, the acting was good, it was historically correct, and evoked emotion. I bought in to the movie through a combination of a great soundtrack, good acting, excellent cinematography and top notch character development. This is no shoot em up for action movie fans looking for non stop pace and killing. It's a great example of storytelling, with explosion set pieces, action, history, and a love of good stories. I really like good quality war based movies, and I really enjoyed this one. I loved this movie.

This movie is riddled with unforgivable inaccuracies. The most convincing part is the mud. An FYI for wannabe screenwriters - check your language references! Australians did NOT say things like "you guys" "ok" and "I'm in" in that era. That kind of error really sets the movie up to fail. Likewise wardrobe. Check shirts might be commonly worn in the bush nowadays but not back then. And that ridiculous black hat..... Regarding plot and character development: a decent examination of how impossible it is to 'get it right' in war. It was easy to sympathise with the protagonist's battle with guilt and regret.