Beneath Hill 60 (2011)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

It's 1916 on the western front. The battle has stalemated by trench warfare. Australian miner Oliver Woodward is the new commander of an Australian tunnel platoon. He was courting 16 year old Marjorie Waddell, 10 years his junior, when he joined the new mine wars. The underground world is a rarely seen battlefield of intense paranoia and constant death.In many ways, this world reminds me of a wartime submarine. There is also plenty trench warfare and above-ground fighting. It would be great to have more delineated characters. A lot of time is spent on Woodward with his flashbacks. Brendan Cowell plays it with stoic heroism. The others tend to blend together. This is a compelling world of combat and takes the fighting to different places.

I'd not heard of this film until my Dad produced a copy of it on DVD he'd bought for a few £ in a supermarket. I watched it this evening.A superb film! I've seen a few films made by Australia about their military history and this is by far the best.The cast is great, some of the scenes underground are as claustrophobic as a good submarine film.The realism, as I would assume having not been at the front during the Great War, was spectacular. Everyone must have been caked in mud for the making of this film. The scenes with characters coming under fire were as good as some of those in 'Saving Private Ryan' as was the tension as they dodged the bullets (or not).My only criticism is the change in volume, I was constantly turning the volume up as they whispered and turning it down to protect my hearing. This is not reason enough to not recommend this film.

I give it a 6. I am a huge war movie fan. I love war movies, and when I read a few reviews and the synopsis I truly wanted to like this movie. Word War I movies are few and far between. That being said, I found this one rather dull.I think if this movie had been 20 years ago I would have loved it. Because it was made in 2010, it failed to really grab my attention. I didn't think it was horrible and I surely have seen worse war movies, but Since Speilbergs "Saving Private Ryan" stepped up the game for the genre, movies like this just don't fit the bill anymore.The acting was fine. There were some good scenes that gave a bit of the claustrophobic sense, but again, as far as the genre go these days its not enough, and you still have a sense of watching a story instead of being there witnessing the story.

There's been so many quality period films and TV series of both the first and second World Wars now that you'd think directors would have got the details down to perfection. IN this film they did in most aspects... the mud and claustrophobia we're well illustrated but I kept being distracted by on glaring (literally!) aesthetic detail they'd decided not to bother with. All these WW1 troops had gleaming white teeth - and full sets at that.Dental care certainly wasn't close to creating celebrity smiles in 1916 - even more so after a few years in the trenches eating bully beef and putting up with bad daily hygiene conditions. When you're spending a few million on filming a realistic era of history - why skip on elements such as these?! The little details help the viewer to suspend disbelief and for me - once I saw the first soldier with a full white set - I found myself watching all the others in comparison when I should have been starting to feel transported to their plight.