Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
During the Blitz of World War II, a female screenwriter works on a film celebrating England's resilience as a way to buoy a weary populace's spirits. Her efforts to dramatise the true story of two sisters who undertook their own maritime mission to rescue wounded soldiers are met with mixed feelings by a dismissive all-male staff.
Their Finest is a warm, well-crafted wartime drama elevated considerably by strong performances, particularly from Gemma Arterton and Bill Nighy, whose comic timing and depth anchor the film. The meta-narrative about making propaganda cinema during the Blitz gives it a distinctive enough angle, though the plot follows fairly familiar beats of a woman proving herself in a male-dominated field with a wartime romance woven in. The cinematography is competent and period-appropriate but unremarkable. The ending takes a genuinely bold and surprising turn that subverts expectations, though its tonal shift feels somewhat unresolved. Novelty is moderate — the filmmaking-within-wartime framing is engaging but not wholly original territory.