WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Neil Welch Catrin Cole comes to London with her artist husband during the Blitz, and takes a job writing "slop" (dialogue for female characters) in films put out by the War Dept. This morphs into screenwriting an inspirational movie about the role of women in the Dunkirk evacuation. But personal relationships raise complications...This movie successfully weaves together elements of romance, drama, comedy, feminism, war, and the British class system (among others) in telling Mrs Cole's story. In doing so, it throws in two story twists, one of them major. They don't exactly turn the story on its head, but they do mean it doesn't follow the course one expects.Gemma Arterton is good as Mrs Cole, and Sam Claflin pleases as her boss. But everyone will love Bill Nighy as egotistical Actor Ambrose.I feared that this would be a feminist tract, but that particular message is sold subtly: it's there, but the film doesn't beat you over the head with it. And you are engaged by the characters, so the message is welcomed.I enjoyed this, and so did the rest of the audience, all of whom were over 60.

xistencial Yeap, it is, boring! For a story happening in the beginning of the most horrendous war on history, there is very little drama or action here. England was bombarded weekly, sometimes daily, but they barely cover the horror of it. The story is also very similar to other movies of beautiful women giving themselves to low life men and finding love on the most logical way, a working and a dedicated man. The cinematography is very good, and the directing too although the director commit the mistake of a slow and desperte tempo. All the actors are great with Mrs Arterton doing an excellent performance. It is the story which is very disappointing and boring.

jnorton45 Great acting. Top drawer writing. First rate director. All the best movie craftsmanship.London during The Blitz after Dunkirk where the women and a few available men are left to tell a story of resistance, heroism, determination and hope. "Their Finest" gives you the feel of how London was in late 1941 and '42 through the individual lives of people thrown into jobs that desperately needed doing. The people are displaced Jews from Europe, an insecure girl from Wales, aging actors, hack writers, undraftable men, all fish out of water figuring out what needed to be done then doing it. Death, love, laughter, betrayal, luck, embarrassment, stupidity, genius all in a fast paced story of World War II.Three things to note. One, Some of the dialogue is tricky to follow because it is in a variety of English accents. You can't really tune your ear to one group of accents. Two, what passes for sexual tension in this movie is very understated by US standards. What they think of as electricity and chemistry between characters is low wattage and barely combustible. They are very charming however. Three, the humor can be understated as well. You need to keep an eye on the actors faces at times to see the humor. Again charming, but more subtle than US audiences are used to.

James Lone Scherfig's "Their Finest" is an enjoyable watch, of that there is little doubt, though (or even perhaps because) it features one of cinema's most-surprising plot twists. It is also - it seems to me - a little unsure of what it is really trying to achieve.Though the Director is Danish and the Producers British and American, the book is a British one from Lissa Evans, and the film itself has a very distinct Ealing Comedy-type vibe (if strongly nuanced by death and sadness).Yet at moments it seems to go beyond being "a little film", heading instead in more-epic directions. It is hard to know how that happens, but it somehow does...The work has a flavour of Powell and Pressburger sweeping grandeur about it, hence one wonders if the Hungarian character of Gabriel Baker played by Henry Goodman is actually meant to be Pressburger. This would fit, given that "A Canterbury Tale" from 1944 features a real-life American serviceman Sergeant John Sweet (the goal being to stress the links between Britain and America), just as the film within the film of "Their Finest" - which is being made in an earlier post-Dunkirk phase of the War - features an American pilot in the shape of Carl Lundbeck played by American Jake Lacey.So is this a film about (the pastiches, lies or bendings of the truth demanded by) propaganda film-making? Always assuming such a term can be deployed in relation to something as beautiful as "A Canterbury Tale", or indeed Pressburger's other gems "A Matter of Life and Death" and "Colonel Blimp", to say nothing of Olivier's exquisite version of "Henry V"? Is "Their Finest" a semi-documentary in this sense? All the more since it occasionally presents, or at least alludes to, real-life wartime information films, and it does have a great deal of worthwhile comment to make about the reasons for such films to be made, and the ways in which they are made? Perhaps it is a not-entirely-funny comedy? Bill Nighy's role here would seem to suggest it is intended to be quite funny, and at times it is. But, in the end, there is too much respect for the real-life story to poke more than a hint of fun at the 1940s. Ultimately, that was "our finest hour", and nothing is going to change that view, or approach. But this is also apparently a film about the further chance at the advancement of women that World War II offered (just as had the First World War a couple of decades previously)? Certainly, there is huge emphasis put on this issue here - sometimes to the point of overkill; though it does, for example, allow us a joyous time with the increasingly omnipresent Helen McCrory as Sophie Smith.The biggest star here is probably "the War Effort", that grand and noble purpose occupying such a high proportion of the wartime population of my country, who got on with something (whatever it might be) as houses and streets continued to be demolished by bombing in a pretty random kind of manner (as "Their Finest" in fact indicates rather beautifully).Nevertheless, not quite everyone here is (or really was) a hero, as this piece makes clear with its ambiguous and enigmatic character of Ellis Cole, played by Jack Huston. Cole looks like he might not really be "doing his bit", yet here too there is nuancing, as he clearly had been prepared to step up a few years previously, fighting (presumably for the left) in the Spanish Civil War. Likewise, a World War I veteran alluded to in the film is unable to adjust to the peacetime world and directs his PTSD at the persecution of his twin daughters.My somewhat failing (or flailing) attempt to sum up a few of the threads in this film does much to indicate my state of mind about a piece that seems to slip between several categories without fully emerging into any one of them.Of course, that is by no means a sign that there is nothing worth watching here, and all the more so as Gemma Arterton and Sam Claflin both do well here in a stiff-upper-lip "Brief Encounter" kind of way.So then this is a romantic film as well? There are also pretty compelling cameos by Jeremy Irons, Richard E. Grant and Eddie Marsan to enjoy, and at least a couple of locations so tranquil and beautiful that it reminds us again that Britain was fighting to defend itself and what it held dear, as well as to destroy somebody else's hideous evil...