The Unknown Soldier (1998– ) User Reviews

Well done and suspenseful.

[George041 · 9/10 · 12 November 2002]

The subject of shell-shock is rarely touched upon in so realistic a fashion. Also, the class distinctions in England are made quite plain in this presentation. If you were an enlisted man during this period of time, 1914-1918, you did not receive the same consideration in a court of justice as an officer in the same army. This policy, I believe continued even up to World War II (1939-1945).

As for medicine, little was known on how to treat shell-shocked men. The administering of electric shock was graphically portrayed. It was not a gentle therapy and many people suffered during this treatment.

All the actors and actresses performed wonderfully. And as someone mentioned, the costumes and scenery appeared very authentic for that time. Oh, in spite of their dedication and intelligence, women were still second class citizens.

All in all, I consider the film a very, very, good one.

Thought provoking WWI mystery - is the amnesiac soldier all he seems?

[hazells518 · 12 May 2002]

This fine mini-series, directed by David Drury (THE CRY, RHODES, and PRIME SUSPECT 3) is a touching and thought-provoking depiction of the futility of the Great War, a slaughter which wiped out a generation, and changed the role of women forever. Written by Peter Barwood (TV series HEARTBEAT) it includes the cruelty of the courts-martial and executions for desertion, the further losses from the the post-war influenza outbreak, the blurring of class distinctions, and the disappointment of women who must relinquish their wartime jobs to the returning men. Beautifully and sensitively acted by Juliet Aubrey as Carey's strong-willed daughter Sophia in one of her best roles since GO NOW and STILL CRAZY. Sophia plays a Nurse who has suffered her own losses and feels very strongly for the disabled men as they and their families try to adjust to normal life. She falls for one of her patients, the enigmatic Unknown Soldier (Gary Mavers, PEAK PRACTICE's hunk Dr. Attwood) found shell-shocked and wandering naked in No-Man's Land. The men call him Angel, as he saved the life of another officer, but who is he really? Is he an Officer or an enlisted man ? In their efforts to find his real identity he faces the horrors of electric shock therapy, accusations of malingering, threats of being returned immediately to the fighting at the front, court-martial as a deserter, and conflicting witnesses including a couple desperately claiming him as their son. Compared to the epic THE English PATIENT (beautifully filmed but too Hollywood) this is more grittily realistic. Mavers' performance is wooden, and Aubrey is altogether too modern and earnest in her commitment to those men (why is she attracted to Angel?) but the cast includes familiar British faces Frederick Treves, Pip Torrens and Tom Chadbon who are as excellent as ever.

Give it a chance

[thinking_out_loud-913-653317 · 10/10 · 21 November 2019]

I watched this as a 12y.o when it was first released and remember it vividly. I rewatch it on occasion and think it is well acted and accurate.

What is this?

[TexasRedge · 1/10 · 11 April 2002]

I watched this film for free on my local PBS network, It was part of a series called Exxon Moble MasterPiece Theater The Previews looked intriguing~ So I watched both parts of this mini-series believing it was going to be great. Well It wasn't. The Lead charactor wonders around a WWI battlefield with amnesia and falls in love with a nurse who is taking care of him(I quickly wondered if this film would've been made at all, had it not been for the critical success of "The English Patient"-which had a very similar theme - for the record I didn't like "The English Patient" either).The sets are wonderful,and the customes are near perfect- and the music score isn't all that bad. Dont waste you time on this film.

this movie is awful, sick horrible.all things bad

[gary-n-sawyer · 1/10 · 24 March 2006]

no good acting, my basset hound is sexier than the old wrinkly women in this movie. the acting is so bad, that i found myself ignoring the movie and i smoke a bunch of pot and then i started jerking off just to keep myself entertained.....that was how bad this movie is. The score is absolutely lousy....there are no special effects. They didn't even use filters on the cameras when then filmed it...so it has that soap opera look to it(porno movies have that same filter-less camera lens look too). don't waste you time on this movie .please don't watch it. I beg you go watch something good. The whole movie has a feel to it that the actors were just going through the motions of some play that they had just rehearsed moments earlier (there eyes are often glancing back to the camera....just stupid

who writes this crap

[TheWeedEater · 1/10 · 30 August 2006]

first. I am no historian. But I know that it wasn't standard procedure for British nurses to start having sex with the wounded soldiers as the rolled into the hospital. Or if it was then I 've totally confused with the difference between a military hospital and a brothel.

Also there is a complete lack of background music that makes this movie move even slower than it already moves. Its filmed like a soap opera. The actors occasionally glance at the camera from the corner of their eyes. The story just is stupid.

a soldier wounded in battle gets medical treatment, and he suffers from amnesia(he cant remember who he is) and his primary nurse almost immediately begins having sex with him. She also goes around having sex with other wounded soldiers to. But she develops feeling for the man who doesn't know who he is. And he actually falls in love with this soldier whore.

this movie is an embarrassment to the studio that made it, and this movie is insulting to anyone in the military medical field and all copies of this film should be gathered up and burned and any record of it's existence wiped out of the record books.

There are so many things to hate about this movie that I don't know where to start. The acting is pitiful and lousy. The story is just stupid. Its filmed without light filters so it looks like a soap opera or a porno movie, the actors keeps watching the camera or looking at someone who is off camera giving them acting instruction(or who knows). There is no background music. the isn't one battle scene in the entire movie. No special effects at all were used. The costumes look like something left over from a local high school play. They couldn't have spent more than $25.00 on this movie and $10.00 of that went toward buying the film they wasted on it.

do yourself a favor a pretend you never heard of this turd!

the most awful kind of a terrible movie

[brandykingport · 1/10 · 2 August 2008]

Even with 2 bottles of warm Vodka in my belly I couldn't enjoy this lousy movie. I had to smoke a joint and constantly play with myself to keep myself entertained through the whole ordeal.

Why is there no music in this movie?

Why is it filmed with no filters on the camera? The only other kinds of movies that don't use filters are soap operas ans porno movies?

Was the producer who did this, was he a high school student or what?

what was with those cheap costumes?

why did the characters spend so much time just talking about their nieces and nephews and farms and barns? It's Just Stupid

why was that nurse going around having sex with those hospital patients?

Someone needs to consider actually having a plot the nest time they want to make a movie.

I rather swallow lysol down my throat, and choke myself raw than to ever sit through this terrible move again. - because it would be less painful

sucked, sucked, oh dear God it sucked

[steverichwood · 1/10 · 8 September 2006]

sucked, sucked, oh dear God this movie sucked and it sucked bad. It was filmed like a soap opera(or like a home movie), and the actors keep looking up at the camera. I've seen high school productions that weren't this bad. That was the first clue that this was a very low budget cheaply made film.

1st- why was the nurse going around having sex with wounded soldiers in the hospital in the first place.

2nd- The main character lost his memory, and yet he fell in love with his nurse. (despite the fact that he knew that she was going around and sleeping with the patients in hospital). He isn't shell shocked! ! ! He is just stupid, unless his #1 goal in life is to catch V.D.

3RD- Its war!, so why is everyone on the battlefield so squeaky clean and hair is perfect. Those uniforms looked as if they just left the dry cleaners.

4th- No real battle scenes, just a few glimpses of them in a trench as you hear bombs and machine gun fire.

did adults really make this movie? Sure as hell don't look like it

this movie must be super insulting to the good people of Great Brittian, to see their proud soldiers and dedicated nurses depicted the way this movie depicts them. This is an outrage(and I'm not even British)

I wish I had Amnesia about this film- Forget about it

[Napoleon Dracula · 1/10 · 11 April 2002]

I got to see this film(mini-series) for free on my local PBS station on a program called the Exxon-Mobile Masterpiece Theater. I had seen the previews and this film(mini-series)looked interesting to me. First off I will that there were a couple of things about this movie that I did like- such as ,1st class acting by the actors in it. the second thing I will commend this movie for is the costumes.But the Battle scenes are lame, and what few specail effects are used in this film are done poorly. This movie moves at such a slow pace you can totaly miss the first night(last for 2 night-4 hours total)and only watch the second night and not miss any of the story. This movie is an extremely boring waste of time. the plot is simple- A British soldier is wounded in WWI and has amnesia, he is found wondering around on a Battlefield suffering from shell-shock, and he doesn't know who he is, but he is taken into the care of a nurse. he and the nurse fall in love with each other and she helps him to recover his memory. This same storyline could've played out in 45 minutes instead of 4 hours-because there just isn't enough story there for the 4 hours it takes to watch it.-I couldn't help but wonder if this film would've been made at all had it not been for the critical success of "The English Patient" which has a very similar story line and was made only 2 years before this film.(for the record I didn't like "The English Patient" either) Because the acting and costumes are well done, and because we dont see enough films about WWI - I give this film 2 stars out of 5

why bother

[StLouisAssassin · 1/10 · 27 March 2006]

this was on PBS here is St Louis last week, and oh my god was it ever so terrible. I hated it. The cameras are filterless and it has the look of an American style soap opera (minus the juicy story lines and the sex).

However the costumes worn by the actors looked chronologically correct. .....but that is all the good that I am going to say about this movie.

it sucked, I mean it really sucked.

there is almost no background music, the acting godawful. You could watch the actors glance up at the camera from time to time. And there is almost zero backgraound music(almost none).

and as for the storyline......so let me get this right....if you got shell shock in World War I, and you forget your idenity, then it becomes your free ticket to start screwing your nurses??? - Oh my God please!...and hell, they didn't even show the sex scenes (it was implied)..gimmie a break!

if it weren't for the camera lighting and the close sets, you would've almost had a feeling that you were watching a home video of a play. ........yes its true.

don't watch this movie. its awful. It makes me wish I had shell shock so I could forget this bastard of a film.

So Retarded that I nearly Farted

[Greyhoundpooch · 1/10 · 2 August 2008]

I thought that this would be a classy production about a man who loses his memory during WWI and a caring nurse who helps him. -WELL SORT OF But leave out the classy part.

The lead character is granted a some time away from the trench, and falls out of the back of a truck and hits his head on the ground and suffers a head trauma.

He wakes up in the military hospital. And a nurse in the hospital is shooting herself up on opium and then she is going around at night and having sex with the patients in the hospital when no one is around. - AND THAT IS HOW SHE MEETS THE LEAD Character. ---The entire rest of the movie is her visiting and re-visiting him in the hospital(often sleeping with him) and a series of hours of conversations filled with the worlds dumbest dialog.

The is no music score, It's filmed like a soap opera (without filters on the cameras) The costumes look are crisp and clean and look like something left over from a high school play.

Just 45 minutes into this movie and I wanted to cut the electrical chord off of a lamp, then weld the wires it to a penny. Then stick the penny up my nose and plug it into the electrical socket. - and give a new meaning to shocked

this has got to be the worst film ever. PUKE! YUCK! SICK SICK SICK.

I hope the producers of this film are ran out of Hollywood, and forced to go to Alaska and freeze their butts off doing slave labor as they work on the great pipeline, until the second coming of Jesus Christ.

I don't get it

[jonhughey · 1/10 · 1 September 2008]

************** WARNING SPOILERS *********************** Okay, It opens with a very week battle scene. There is no music. Apparently they didn't have a budget for that. The lead character is on the front lines during World War I. He gets a week end pass to leave the trenches for two days. But as he is riding in the back of a truck leaving, the truck hits a bump and he is thrown out of the back of the truck and hits his head on a rock. >>> I thought it was going to be a comedy at that point.

He wakes up in a hospital lobby lying in a bed with bandages on his head, and he cannot remember how he got there....then he panics when he realizes that he cannot even remember his ow n name. After nurses calm him down. He lays in the bed for a long, long scene just looking around at the other patients who are in the beds around him. Some of them have missing limbs, others are suffering.

Here is the scene that I really didn't get >>>>>Later that night as he lay in bed, he sees a nurse walk over to the patient who is two beds down from him, and she gently climbs into bed with him and rides him (sex)and then after a few moments she climbs out of the bed, then she walks over to the patient in the next bed and asked him "Do you want some sex?" and then she climbs into that bed and rides that guy. Then she comes over to the lead character and asked him "Do you want some sex?" and he nods his head and replies "Yeah, Sure" and she climbs into his bed and rides him, but as she starts to get off of him, he grabs her arm and asked her to ride him for a few more moments, and she does. The when he gets off, she gently kisses him on the cheek and he thanks her. She gets out of his bed and goes over to the next guy in the next bed. >>>> who wrote this crap! ! !>>>> and who was the even bigger fool who decided to make it into a movie! !>>>> And who are the Dumb A55es who didn't stop 'em ! ! as if him injuring himself by falling out of the army truck wasn't bad enough, the bed hopping nurse sex scene really took the cake.

Then, the next day he recognizes the nurse who screwed him the night before, and he asked her name and starts having conversations with her. Then she starts feeling sorry for him ....soon his head wound heals up and the two of them start taking long walks, and talking about their families, eating diners together. And of course they start to fall in love. >>>> the lead character asks her what kind of dog she has, but he never asked her why the hell was she going around having sex with all of the men who were patients in the military hospital. >>>> If I were going to get involved with this woman, I'd want to know that>>>>wouldn't you.

And of course he starts to recover some of his memory and the rest you can almost figure out with out seeing the movie>>>In fact I never watch the 2nd half of the film because I could already see where it was going and how it was going to end.

There is no background music in this movie, little to no plot, no action. It was filmed on a low budget. There are no filters used on the cameras when it was filmed so it looks like an American soap opera.

I don't recommend this movie, it is just stupid. Oh my God is it Stupid.