The War Below

If I were one of the tunnellers I would be proud of this movie, it was focused, respectful and moving.

It simply has everything in the right place. It's a combination of a great story of real selfless sacrifice, a good script and excellent acting.

Could the end result be any better? Sure. If they had the budget for million-dollar special effects and A-list actors, the eye-candy value would be higher. But this is a war movie, about real people who gave their lives for others. It's not Candy Crush.

I recently watched an absolute shambles of a WW1 film called "Forbidden Ground" from 2013. That film was made on a budget in the region of $40 million. The film spent more time up in the actors faces that you would wonder what exactly the money went towards. Then I seen this film, "The War Below", made on a very low budget of around 500,000 pounds. The set-design values, namely the trenches, looked a thousand times better, or rather, were utilised better in this film. Obviously, it is no "1917", but "The War Below" definitely stands tall and I would rank among the best WW1 productions. It would give its natural equivalent, "Beneath Hill 60", a good run at the races. Like that movie, the film follows the story of a group of civilian tunnellers arriving in the trenches of Europe during the Great War. They are tasked with digging beneath No Mans Land and planting enough explosives beneath the German trenches to destroy them and end the bloody stalemate once and for all.

Everyone deserves praise for this film but what truly stood out to me was the cinematography by Nick Cooke. There are some beautiful shot scenes of spring fields and soldiers walking through them and obviously he had a hand to play in bringing the trenches to life.

Based on the true WWI story of a group of professional tunnellers, bought in by the army to tunnel under enemy lines and blow up their defences in time for 'the big push' at the Battle of Messiness.

This was never going to be a Where Eagles Dare type war film and its limited budget is clear. However this is a solid and towards the climax, exciting true story. The characterisations are a little bit bland and you never really get to know them, but this is largely because of the need to focus on the mechanics of the tunnelling effort. That said, Sam Hazeldine, the man in charge of his not always convinced team does well in the hero role and steers the story along nicely. The film also devotes time to emphasising per the ongoing controversy that General Haig and Colonel Fielding were as mad as a box of frogs and cared little for their men as long as they pushed forward and died like gentlemen.

This is the first movie I've seen that was focusing on this topic - digging a tunnel to the German trenches. Up to this point, I've only ever read about the sorts of daring actions these coal miners did in the trenches in WWI.

The production value was high. It really did manage to convey what life was like for the diggers in these trenches. But even so, I'm sure it was no where near representing how it was really like in real life. But it was done well in this movie. It's realism clearly exceeding the realism of any recent war movies - particularly when compared to movies like "Dunkirk" by Chris Nolan.

Other pluses from this movie... the acting was superb, the drama and atmosphere created with all the special effects and set designs, simply brilliant.

SUMMARY: Inspired by true events with the war serving as the backdrop The main story is the courage, sacrifices and contribution the coal miners did in WWI.

VERDICT: Recommended viewing - specially if you're a history/war buff.