Before Dawn

While I had never heard about this 2024 war movie titled "Before Dawn", I must admit that I needed no persuasion to sit down and watch it on account of it being a war movie.

However, writers Jordon Prince-Wright and Jarrad Russell delivered a slow paced movie, so very, very slow. You have to sit through more than 60 minutes of the movie where nothing worthwhile really happens. So more than half of the movie was squandered on setting the stage and establishing characters, but not really succeeding in any great way of doing so. And that just didn't really pan out all that well in terms of providing proper entertainment for me.

I was not familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but I will say that the acting performances were fair, despite the fact that the movie's script failed to get off to a proper running start.

Visually then "Before Dawn" was good, it definitely looked and felt like a war movie. Though it was a bit odd why all the trenches were so shallow that the soldiers had to constantly hunch over in order to move without being shot. There were some nice attention to details, and the uniforms were good.

I am sure that diehard war movie fans will enjoy "Before Dawn" a lot more than I did, especially if you don't mind a slow paced narrative that focuses on establishing characters.

While I managed to sit through 100 minutes that the movie ran for, director Jordon Prince-Wright didn't really manage to entertain me all that much. And this is definitely not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time. I have to admit that I was definitely expecting a bit more action from a movie such as this, and it felt like it was a squandered opportunity to show some great trench warfare on the screen.

My rating of "Before Dawn" lands on a less than mediocre four out of ten stars.

I was very excited for this film and for more Australian war films to be made, but I almost walked out numerous times. There is no story, no character development, the sets never change, the dialogue was abysmal and of course it is so far beyond historically inaccurate. The trenches are like 5 feet deep and always look muddy and in a terrible state, the uniforms were not put together by someone who knows the period, the medical conditions are laughably wrong and the battle scenes are farcical. This is a low budget film that thinks it is a high budget film in scope, trying to cover multiple years of the war instead of just focusing on a small time frame and a small group of characters, and because of that this apparent $9m film feels like it was made for about $50,000. Everything is wrong and it feels wrong.

This may not be an epic war movie but it's an important story about how young and naive our young soldiers were when they signed up for WW1.

It tells the story of young man conflicted between loyalty to his family sheep station and his mates volunteering for the war.

The conditions these kids fought under were appalling but the fought well and honourably.

There have been lots of war movies but most are American and about heroes....this one is about Aussie kids.

It was not the best movie but if you think about the era, 1916, and the sacrifices these soldiers made in a foreign country under terrible conditions, it's told well.

I gave this movie a 6/10 just.

It's harmless and tells the story of war many others have told.

It felt lazy and miss directed. The acting seemed very wooden, however this could have been due to the miss direction.

The trenches did not look real and the cinematography was average at best.

This Movie never got me gripped into believing I was at war with them. I Simply was not bothered and felt no emotion for any of the characters.

Their was no main story line or historical battles, just skipping through years at an accelerated speed.

Looking past the negatives, I love a WW1 movie and I preferred to have watched it rather than not.

Give it a go on Netflix or prime l, certainly not Cinema quality.

Lots of new young faces in this movie. Depicting WW1, trenches, mud, rain, snow, rain & more snow. The young boys want to be men on the battlefield and do not understand the consequences of the adventure they thought would await them.

The thing that kept bugging me through the whole movie was the fact they were in mud up to their elbows, yet they were clean-shaven, and freshly cut hair.

Levi MIller is a good up-and-coming actor, and has a good list of past work on here. So will likely see him a lot in the future in movies.

Overall not a bad movie, makes you think about what these young men went through in the trenches over 100 years ago. You can see why on returning home they would have struggled to life before the war. We know now about PTSD, not back then.

Sad to see that in the US & Canada it only returned $743 on the opening weekend. Shows that it was not marketed very well.