As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank—both agile runners—become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.
Weir's work has a delicacy, gentleness, even wispiness that would seem not well suited to the subject. And yet his film has an uncommon beauty, warmth, and immediacy, and a touch of the mysterious, too.
– Janet Maslin,
New York Times,
20 May 2003
rotten:
The central section devoted to training in Egypt sags badly through its crass buddy antics and its crude caricatures of wogs and pommies.
– Tom Milne,
Time Out,
24 Jun 2006
rotten:
Well acted and, within its limited terms, well made, Gallipoli represents a failure of nerve as well as design.