First of all, let me qualify my rating of a "1" as a counter response to this junk being considered as the "frontrunner" for Best Picture at the Oscars and ranked #51 currently on the top 250. It's really about a "6"-"7", but many of the reviews and gushing that has occurred with this average movie are irritating and untruthful.

Many years ago, a friend of mine got me to watch the movie "Atonement", which I had heard of but never saw before, and I was surprised a good portion of it had a lot to do with the WWI time period. Some of the more memorable scenes in that movie which made it stand out were based on events in WWI. While I didn't love Atonement, I could at least see why it was nominated for Academy Awards because it was artistically written and filmed with several layers and themes that stuck with you, at least for a little while after watching it. Well, Atonement never won any major awards, despite the nominations, perhaps justly so as although it was a pretty good movie, it wasn't all that.

Saving Private Ryan, arguably the greatest WWI-II time period war movie ever made also did not win Best Picture at the Oscars. Both of these movies are at least twice as respectable and good as "1917", which except for the impressive one-take filming method, comes across often as implausible, dumb, banal, and believe it or not actually laughable at times with how ridiculous some of the scenes are. This movie actually borders on "Commando" territory with the main character's plot armor, and that's only one point of many with what is wrong with it.

To even consider this movie in the same league as SPR is laughable in many ways. Even a movie I didn't like too much like Atonement, at least it had some depth and an actual script with character development. This war movie, 1917, has practically nothing except for the one-take clever achievement.

It actually "tries" to add depth, but it fails when it zeroes in on implausible and cheesy scenarios with the milk-baby scene, the Indian winding up in the back of the truck just for PC-oriented people, and a superficial yet disappointing attempt at tying in themes of family and moral dilemma, especially during the final act. The way it handles these attempts at depth truly comes across in a manner in which it seems like the "target audience" of this movie is Marvel comic book fans and teenagers. The visuals are great, but it has basically no depth at all. It cheesily places good actors in "cameo" roles, when their acting gravitas should have been used in major roles somehow to add credibility to it, instead.

I just can't believe the Academy might stoop so low as to hand this Best Pic when it really has a weak script and writing. It would only validate the fact that the quality of movies Hollywood has been producing the past decade or two has fallen officially so far as to reward borderline-Marvel-comic book films that play out like video games for teens as its Best Picture.