And I thought it would be difficult to take all the thrill out of a war movie. Regeneration manages to do exactly that by putting the setting at the end of World War I -- not in the action, but in a mental hospital, where a couple of British poets are being treated for shell shock. Poets. Shell shock. This is not excitement -- and I'm a writer for a living! (The film is based on a true story about a genuinely crazy poet.)

Despite the de rigueur love story and some gut-turning flashbacks, this exercise in brown and olive green is pretty limp. Yes, war is rough. War is hell. War makes people go crazy. We got it.