I was happy and excited to see a movie about Canadian soldiers in the First World War, but disappointed with the product. That young Canadians volunteered to a squalid life in the trenches, lost injured soldiers to the muddy fields, and had aid stations that operated at a fever pitch without antibiotics or, often, anesthetics -- these all show that there is a story to be told here. A difficult and heart-rending story yes, but certainly a story that can stand on its own. If told deftly.

The makers of this film tell us about so many things they could have more effectively shown. This is a film, not a book, and film is a visual medium so show us what you mean don't tell us. For example, the scene of the doctor in Calgary giving a little presentation describing battlefield wounds and passing around a piece of shrapnel could have been far more effectively conveyed visually on the battlefield. So why only spend 30 minutes in Europe ?

SHOW us why the Germans called the Canadians stormtroopers, and THEN TELL us that is the moniker the enemy bestowed on us. See how this could have worked ?

That there was a romantic interest was something I expected. This is a common device used to show the humanity of people who will later do brutal things. Think "History of Violence". Once again though the film relies too much on little speeches and pronouncements to tell us about their feelings rather than showing people relating to each other by how they treat each other. Vets of the First and Second World War are renown for their reticence, so that 1.5hrs of the movie especially didn't ring true.

The "stations of the cross" scene is some measure of just how far from the reality the film makers wandered. I've heard of the First World War trenches described as weeks of boredom and anxiety punctuated by short periods of shear terror and confusion. To me this movie was weeks of eager anticipation followed by hours of growing disappointment and frustration.

So I guess I'm still waiting for a movie that can really convey the pride, professionalism, necessary brutality and heart-rending emotional aftermath of Canadian soldiers who've seen battle. I guess I wanted a film that made me feel a combination of pride, disgust and grief and this film failed to do so.

I would nominate this film for cinematography, costume, special effects and maybe audio and acting but not screenplay or "best film" certainly. And I don't think more money would have fixed this.

War movies are not exactly a typical Canadian genre, and so I've been wanting to see "Passchendaele" for some time. As a war movie, this is very well done. Both the opening - depicting Sgt. Dunne's role in an unnamed battle - and the closing - which follows Dunne and Mann through a portion of the Battle of Passchendaele - are graphic and believable representations of battle, and they provide a sobering view of war, which may be necessary (that's another debate for another time) but is certainly neither glorious nor noble, although the individual soldiers who fight may well be both. The subtle (or perhaps not so subtle if one has ever read the Gospel accounts of Jesus' crucifixion) religious overtone to the closing scenes of the battle as Dunne effectively carries his cross across the battlefield (it's necessary to watch the movie to understand that) is also powerful. The soldiers who lived through this insanity would also be carrying their own crosses for the rest of their lives.

The weakness of the movie is found in the middle hour, between the battle scenes. The portion of the movie set in Calgary raised significant questions about patriotism, loyalty, duty, etc., but is also rather slowly paced. Dunne, having returned home suffering from shell- shock after the opening battle is assigned to recruitment duty. Falling in love with the nurse who treated him, he discovers that her brother is anxious to sign up, in order to win the respect of the father of the girl he loves but more to regain his family's honour, which he feels was tainted by his father, who was born in Germany and returned home to fight for Germany, eventually dying in battle against Canadian troops at the Battle of Vimy Ridge. That story is interesting, but it's slow pace is quite a contrast to the chaos of the battle scenes - perhaps appropriately so - and makes this part of the movie seem perhaps even slower than it really is.

The performances from the two main leads (Paul Gross as Dunne, and Caroline Dhavernas as Sarah, the nurse he falls in love with) were excellent. I was a bit put off by the tear-jerker ending of the movie, but that turned out to be key to the last and haunting shot of the Canadian war cemetery, with rows upon rows of crosses (to paraphrase Lt. Col. John McCrae's famous poem) and a riderless horse in the background. An extremely well-done movie, indeed. 7/10