Journey's End

Long before this poignant and powerful antiwar story reached the screen, it became a British institution as a long-running play. Set during WW I, most of the action takes place in an underground bunker set in the trenches of the Western Front. Clive is a commander of troops who merely waits for orders to take a few feet of ground and then sees his men die in a stalemated war, a hopeless, thankless fate where all is doom. He cannot bear to give orders that will take more lives, so he takes to drinking heavily. He begins to argue with his second-in-command, Maclaren, who is losing faith in him, and he works over Manners, who is the brother of the girl he loves. In on...