This taut, handsome historical drama about a British battalion in northern France is adapted from RC Sherriff’s 1928 play. With all the action confined to a few days in a trench circa 1918, it feels a little stagey in parts. That said, the film’s focus on characters rather than action offers a contrast to the sheer in-the-moment spectacle of a wartime feature such as Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.
Journey’s End is an ensemble affair, with Toby Jones’s grumpy cook channelling Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder, and Asa Butterfield (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Hugo) as Raleigh, a bug-eyed recruit whose boyish wonderment is unable to protect him from the inevitable. Sam Claflin is particularly good as the boozy, brooding Captain Stanhope, whose intensity, belligerence and self-loathing flesh out what might in less capable hands have been a cliched, shell-shocked soldier.
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