> Beneath Hill 60
4 stars (out of 5)
Director: Jeremy Sims
Cast: Brendan Cowell, Gyton Grantley, Aden Young, Bella Heathcote, Jacqueline Mackenzie, Anthony Hayes and Steve Le Marquand
Rating: (M)
It's Messines, Belgium, in 1917, and it is a hell of mud, rain, sandbags and flying bullets. And that's just on top.
Underground, 30m beneath Flanders Fields, the Allies and Germans are engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
The 1st Australian Tunnelling Company is trying to dig under the German trenches to sow mines beneath the Messines ridge and detonate an explosive charge to aid the advance of British troops.
If the plan succeeds, it will be the biggest explosion the world has seen.
Beneath Hill 60 is based on the true account of the mission written by Queensland miner and company commander Captain Oliver Woodward (Brendan Cowell).
It is indicative of the film's intensity that Hugo Weaving, originally cast in the role of Woodward, had to pull out due to claustrophobia.
The film was shot in Queensland last year, with a budget of just $A8.1 million ($NZ10.2 million).
Great attention has been paid to historic detail, and the film is almost completely scrubbed free of cheese.
The scene in which some plucky lads cross a muddy, bomb-cratered no-man's land to plant a charge beneath a German bunker is as gripping a piece of World War 1 drama as you will see.
There are moments of poignancy, too, such as when a doomed miner learns of his fate when he lights a match and the flame immediately dies in the oxygen-depleted tomb.
Best thing: WW1 equipment and instruments.
Worst thing: At two hours, it was slightly over-reaching.
See it with: A claustrophobe. It will add to the tension.
- Nigel Benson.
