Clocking in at just under two hours, Lone Scherfig’s 2017 film, “Their Finest” epitomizes war: it starts off with what seems like a clear purpose and steadily declines until everyone involved is left wondering whose idea it was to start that mess in the first place.

Perhaps I am being too harsh. The individual performances of the principle actors in the film were excellent. Sam Claflin (Tom Buckley), Gemma Arterton (Catrin Cole) and Bill Nighy (Ambrose Hilliard) lit up each scene through their characters’ complementary personalities. Where Claflin’s portrayal of Buckley offered a biting cynicism of the point of war, Arterton brought a gentle, yet dynamic optimism that despite declining morale as Nazi Germany pressed down on their resilient island, anyone could have their own little piece in making the war run smoother for Britons. Likewise, seasoned veteran Nighy was perhaps a personal favorite, offering quick-witted remarks and the occasional nuance of facial expression that had the audience in stitches.

However, despite these superb performances, the overall story was sloppy and felt rushed, especially toward the end. The thing about war films is that it is easy to use the “it’s supposed to feel rushed, like war” reasoning as a cop-out for poor development and pacing. The film starts off strongly, showing Cole in her quest for a job to support her and her partner, who is a struggling artist and suffered an injury during the Spanish Civil War that left him unfit to serve. She then finds a job working for the Ministry of Information, where she writes scripts for short information films. It is while working on a particular film that she meets Buckley, with whom she strikes up a volatile working relationship, and ultimately develops mutual romantic feelings toward later in the film.

Since the film largely focuses on their process writing and organizing the film-within-a-film, we do not receive much focus on the developing relationships between the characters, which as a result, feel rushed. Not simply the romantic ones either. The strengthening platonic relationship between Cole and Hilliard, which provides a touching scene at the end, seemed contrived. The main issue at hand was that the film tried to focus on too many things, which resulted in all of these aspects ultimately being neglected, to no fault of the actors. If they wanted the central focus of the film to be on Claflin and Arterton’s characters, they should have eliminated some of the internal war film sequences that were only there to show their progress in creating the propaganda film. Likewise, rather than devoting as many scenes to supporting characters, such as Sophie Smith (Helen McCrory), they could have limited those with the knowledge that certain characters did not add enough to the story to warrant extended on-screen time.

The film seems to be a commentary on too many different things at once. At some early points it appears that it will be a woman’s role during the war and at others, it seems to be about actors and their egos. All of these could feature as aspects of the film, but they are also worthy of their own story so that they can get the full attention that they require, rather than brief five-minute dialogues that detract from the central point and do not do these issues justice. For the sake of the viewer, the film should have limited its message so that those watching did not leave feeling like they needed a chiropractor to sort out their mental whiplash.

Overall, I did enjoy particular moments of the film. Buckley and Cole finally admitting their feelings for each other was the moment that everyone in the audience waited for and for a while, thought would never arrive. If the movie could be redone, hopefully Scherfig would choose to go deeper into their relationship, particularly because the characters’ respective actors have great chemistry with each other. I mean, it’s Sam Claflin, after all.