Before Dawn is a slow trudge through the horrors of war. In some respects, this makes sense. The film follows a handful of young soldiers from Australia sent to fight on the Western Front, believing the Great War to be almost over but, in fact, facing nearly two more years of the major conflict. We know from several movies (more specifically, a particular pair of adapted novels set amongst all the quiet) and the historical record just how bleak this stage of the war was. The problem with director Jordon Prince-Wright’s film is that it introduces only a sense of hollow routine in the telling of this story.
There are no new ideas here, in other words. Jim Collins (Levi Miller) was once a farmhand, working for his father and unable to deny his calling to be on the frontlines with men who understood something about duty and honor. Supported by his friends, Don (Ed Oxenbould) and Legs (Jason Burch), he decides to abandon that life for the promise of military glory, not fully understanding that the experience is going to be radically different from what he expects it to be. That becomes quite obvious with his first consequential encounter with the enemy after joining his fellow Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers on that frontline.
It’s the most terrifying and instructive scene in the movie’s arsenal of many scenes that wish to communicate the fog of war. Offering the tiniest bit of mercy to a German officer, Jim learns the hard way that, while mercy should technically be the overall goal between warring nations, on a specific and humanistic level, it has the ability to betray. Allowing that bit of mercy, after all, leads to unthinkable tragedy when it gives away a crucial position. From here, though, the horrors become of the more generic variety, as Jim bonds with his fellow soldiers; struggles under the command of the seemingly immovable Cpl. Beale (Stephen Peacocke); and ponders an alternate present in which he stays home and works in the fields where it is safe.
Miller is solid enough here, although the gimmick of his hindsight narration is a lazy way for screenwriter Jarrad Russell to convey all the internal struggle we already see on the actor’s face. Jim sees and narrowly escapes one horrifying scene of carnage after the next, and because the movie’s budget was clearly small, confining the action to circular conversations taking place in the trenches of the battle and rarely venturing over the tops of them, that carnage is mostly intimated through suggestion and the sound design. During the few times that the movie does directly portray its violent side, Prince-Wright’s ambitions reveal their limitations.
The film does get at those hard truths about war, mainly because such truths are inherent within the structure of a war movie. That means Before Dawn is almost stumbling into its own sense of storytelling confidence, narrowing its thematic scope as it goes until it only winds up painting the broadest possible strokes of wartime woe. Prince-Wright dedicates the film to his grandfather, basing the story on real diary entries from the frontlines. That means the film is personal to some degree, but it’s just a shame that the result so often feels anonymous.
Photo courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment
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