They Shall Not Grow Old

2018

Action / Documentary / History / War

62
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 99% · 157 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 91% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 8.2/10 10 38290 38.3K

Please enable your VPN when downloading torrents

If you torrent without a VPN, your ISP can see that you're torrenting and may throttle your connection and get fined by legal action!

Get Expert VPN

Plot summary

A documentary about World War I with never-before-seen footage to commemorate the centennial of Armistice Day, and the end of the war.


Uploaded by: FREEMAN
December 17, 2018 at 08:30 AM

Director

Top cast

720p.BLU 1080p.BLU 720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
843.41 MB
1280*950
English 2.0
R
23.976 fps
1 hr 39 min
Seeds 12
1.59 GB
1120*832
English 2.0
R
23.976 fps
1 hr 39 min
Seeds 47
834.41 MB
1280*950
English 2.0
R
24 fps
1 hr 39 min
Seeds 5
1.58 GB
1120*832
English 2.0
R
24 fps
1 hr 39 min
Seeds 25

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by angus-lamont 10 / 10

From a freelance colourising artist

As this historically important anniversary draws to a close, I just want to say that my viewing of this film was that of utter amazement. As a photo colouriser/restorer, I was absolutely astonished at the work PJ's team put into this. The transition from the original film material, then to the stabilised and corrected FPS and then the full colour and sound was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen on the screen. The colour is natural and really helps emphasise the grittiness of war and brings out hidden details that may have been missed in the B&W source. Usually I prefer film not to be tampered with, but as Jackson says, this is how the men saw it - in living colour. The addition of the voiceovers from the surviving soldiers themselves is a great choice and doesn't distract and flows along nicely with the visuals. Throughout I expressed various emotions of sadness and shock, but surprisingly a few laughs, particularly one shot showing a soldier banging a tune on another soldiers helmet as they march. I do wish I had seen this on the big screen and I imagine what I have said is enhanced 100x more with that type of viewing. A fitting tribute to the men that did and didn't come home and I hope it is recognised and picks up many awards.

Reviewed by MartinHafer 7 / 10

War in all its awfulness.

I was very surprised when I watched "They Shall Not Grow Old" as I think my hopes were set way too high. Instead of seeing amazingly restored archival footage, the whole thing looked much like colorized WWI documentaries I'd seen on television already. Now I am not saying the film was bad....but it wasn't the amazingly restored masterpiece I heard it had been. Yes, Peter Jackson and his team did a ton of work on the film and it is impressive...but not as impressive as I'd hoped.

As for the film itself, it consists of no narration--just snippets from hundreds of different soldiers' accounts of the war. Then, it was all strung together with many, many, many short snippets. I personally would have probably enjoyed less snippets and more lengthy accounts of the war as the style film made it seem a bit choppy and disconnected.

Overall, not a bad film at all but one that didn't leave me as blown away as I expected from a BAFTA-nominated documentary. Good...not great.

By the way, while sitting and watching all this became a bit numbing, this would be a great film to show at a history museum--perhaps to play as you walked around the museum or perhaps cut into snippets that play as you walk about the place.

Reviewed by Horst_In_Translation 6 / 10

Pretty decent WWI documentary

"They Shall Not Grow Old" is a co-production between the United Kingdom and New Zealand and the latter here stems from the fact that this was directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson. This fact probably gives this movie we got here probably some additional popularity and will get more people curious about it, but at the core of it all this time time is not the big name who produced it, but instead the historic component. In minimally under 100 minutes we get an insight into what life was like during the days of World War I from the British perspective. It is not a coincidence this is a 2018 release because this one here was made for the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. There's 2 major components here to focus on with my review. The first would be the video, the second the audio. Now with the video, there is a bit of a framework because at the very beginning and end, we see scenes of soldiers in black-and-white, while everything in-between is in color. This may surprise you given the years this documentary depicts and I was occasionally also not sure if there were reenactments here made by Jackson with actors, especially when people were talking, the people we see I mean, or if it was really all old footage and colorized, but I think it was the latter. Now for the audio site, it is probably more important and crucial here than in other (documentary) movies because from beginning to end, we hear voice-overs that are connected to what we see really. These voice-overs come from soldiers and also people training these soldiers back during these days of war. And there is a lot of talking, basically no break between speaking so no surprise that in the end the list of narrators includes hundreds of people as basically every single one of them only says one sentence, two sentences max, so you can be sure these sentences actually come from them. It's not one or two narrators telling a big story or so. But again, I was a bit uncertain here, namely given the fact that even the young guns who were in WWI were born around the year 1900, so unless they are the oldest people alive now they are long gone. I think I actually read that a while ago the last soldier active in this first big war had died. So what does this mean for the narration? Either, it's old recordings, but then it is barely creative what Jackson did here at least not 100% because he came up with footage and images that fit the narration. Or alternatively he got now old narrators who recite these quotes from the soldiers. But it is not really too important which of both it is now. The outcome still looked pretty competent I would say and with Jackson you usually get quality. I probably even like some of his works that did not have such a good reception by critics. But this one here has an amazing reception, also was nominated for a BAFTA.

As for the specific contents, it is basically chronological and we hear many anecdotes too. The best example is at the very beginning how we hear all of them tell us how they were really too young to go to war, even legally, but their recruiters did not mind and even helped them to do so if they wanted to by telling them stuff like "you just said you are 18? I want you to leave the room, come in again and say you are 19". It happens in times of war honestly and when it came to serving and protecting Britain, many exceptions were made. This was one of actually quite a few funny moments. These anecdotes keep it light at times. There's examples of how we find out how they were taking a **** which was really not sanitary and what happened when the wood under them broke into pieces. Now that was a mess. Or what happened when the soldiers ran into prostitutes. And a handful other lighter moments. The best example is also the occasionally hilarious comic book style animation Jackson decided to go for here. But the longer the film went, the more serious it became and also the more specific war action was included. People were injured horribly, many times killed we shouldn't forget that. What did it say at the end before the closing credits rolled in? 1 million Brits were killed I think until the end of the war in 1918. A powerful statement, which should have the impact on us to avoid war (i.e. a 3rd World War) at all costs. And also these mmore dramatic and specific comments about the front by the British soldiers were interesting. For example how they spoke about the enemy, the Germans that is. They showed respect to them as a whole, saw them as hard-fighting, skilled soldiers they on one occasion said they would rather have fought with than against. They also say tehy are just normal men who worked at random stores and shops or factories before they had to go to war. There is really not hate against these German soldiers specifically. But there clearly is against Germany as a whole because especially at the beginning of thie documentary you hear the old British men say they basically could not wait to head to war action, even if they knew it was dangerous and they had no idea if they ever return, but the prospect of killing Germany for their country makes it very much worth it. Now this attitude certainly can be discussed to great extent and if I wanted to I could elaborate on that with a text as long as this entire review, but I'll leave it at that. What else can I say here? Oh yeah I am not too fond of the title honestly because it is true many died, but these at the core and center, the ones who narrated, did grow old, so it does not feel too accurate and sounds too baity to me for the entire subject. Also even if I liked most of the narration and thought they had a lot of interesting to say, I felt maybe it would have been a better choice to go a bit more for quality over quantity, not have constantly people talk and elabborate, but includes longer moments of silence where you could really entirely focus on what you say, at least on some occasions instead of turning this film into a waterfall of words really. But it is also okay the way it turned out and it is just subjective anyway. Equally subjective is my perception that the second half of the film was less memorable to me because I am just not a fan of war action or films that mostly focus on that (also not a fan of Saving Private Ryan for example), so I preferred the elaboration and background information and anecdotes from early on. I am not sure, to sum it all up, how close to the heart the project was for Peter Jackson, but the mention of his own ancestor makes it look a bit this way I guess, so good to see he still comes up with creative ideas and quality films not too far away from his 60th birthday. Or maybe it happened already even, depending on when you read this review. "They Shall Not Grow Old" gets a thumbs-up from me and as I am generally more interested in the days of WWII than WWI, this does mean something, even if I still think it could have been better and don't see it as defining as a documentary on the subject as some others do. Still nice to see with the uncountable amount of films made on this subject that there can still be something new that is worth checking out. Go watch.

Read more IMDb reviews

15 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment