Good Morning Lovelies, 

With a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Journey’s End is a film that was serious overshadowed last year. Telling the beautiful and tragic story of the last major offensive of the first world war to mark 100 years since it began, it shows the soldiers lives on the front line as their face their last and first battles.

Taking the play from stage to screen for the fourth time, Sam Claflin plays Captain Stanhope in a career-defining performance, alongside Asa Butterfield, as new officer Raleigh, Toby Jones, Paul Bettany and Tom Sturridge. Altogether making the best version of the cinematic version to date.
From heartfelt moments of the men discussing home to the downfalls of the war and the mental effects, it left on a person. The film captures Stanhope, as he suffers from the acts he has done and seen, whilst commanding his team, including latest arrival Raleigh, who is yet to see the horrors the war could leave on a person.

Calling upon previous shows and over adaptations of the war, the characters are placed within a shocking setting but made to stand out on their own. Claflin’s Stanhope drowns himself in whisky to get through the horrors he has seen, whilst new recruit Raleigh’s excitement is captured fizzing out as he sees what is really happening to those from back home on the front line.

There are of course the familiar themes, but there are easily overridden with the superb acting that comes from them. Claflin knows what to do to make the two sides of his character work for all audiences, whilst Jones and Bettany show you that the people who are standing alongside him have a home life the long to return to and Raleigh brings the innocent the young men had about war and fighting for one’s country.

Director Saul Dibb has been clever with this film. Whilst it didn’t get the same reaction or buzz about it last year, most likely due to Dunkirk’s big release, it is the quiet ones that you should look out for. It highlights how a silent masterpiece can go on to do huge things, be seen and teach others not only the workings of the play but the emotions and lives of the men on the front line.

There so, I am giving this film…