1917 is mostly a well made film, the set pieces are gorgeous, the acting is fine, the cinematography is stunning, fitting soundtrack etc etc it does most things really well and it most certainly held my attention throughout it's runtime.

The main issue I had with the film was not the lack of combat scenes (as it focuses mainly on the main characters and not large battle scenes as a whole) it was the lack of realism, for example two young soldiers are given a task by a general to make an important trip to another front in order to halt the allied attack there due to a German trap that is set for them as otherwise many lives will be lost, now why would a general rely on two lower ranked soldiers alone to pass on such an important message, not even sending other runners just two guys across many kilometres and just hoping they will make it, very silly.

Other examples include the Germans missing almost every shot when the main character is fired upon and is essentially a sitting duck, shot after shot after shot all close range missing completely, then there are others things missing like background ambience of a war in some cases totally absent, just little things like that.

All that said I still think it's a good movie worth watching, it has some great scenes and can be quite moving at times, well worth a watch just wish the producers paid a little more attention to details.