Final '1917' Trailer: War Is Hell (And Filmed In One Unbroken Shot)

1917 is a war movie unlike any you've seen before. Sam Mendes' World War I saga unfolds as if it's one very long, unbroken shot. It's not, of course, but Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins found a way to make it work, and work considerably well. Now there's one final 1917 trailer to set you up for what Mendes and company have in store. Watch it below.

There's going to be a lot of talk about the one-shot set-up of 1917, and rightfully so. It looks amazing. But don't make the mistake of thinking this film is only about that gimmick. There's much more to Sam Mendes' war drama. I saw the movie last month, and was surprised at how powerful it was. As I said in my review:

The script, by Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, is often disarmingly powerful in the way it presents both the horrors of war and the glimpses of beauty lurking beneath. 1917 is a consistently frightening film, full of landscapes littered with corpses wrapped in barbed-wire, dotted with burning houses, and brimming with rats feeding on the dead. It's like a long one-take journey through the bowels of hell. We feel the weight of all that nightmarish imagery, and we also feel the weight of it on our characters.

Here's the film's synopsis:

At the height of the First World War, two young British soldiers, Schofield (Captain Fantastic's George MacKay) and Blake (Game of Thrones' Dean-Charles Chapman) are given a seemingly impossible mission. In a race against time, they must cross enemy territory and deliver a message that will stop a deadly attack on hundreds of soldiers—Blake's own brother among them.

Starring George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, with Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch, 1917 opens in limited release December 25, 2019 and wide on January 10, 2020.