Michael Caine is definitely going to be in this telling some overly long story about WWI that unnecessarily explains the entire motivation of a character.
Pvt. Christian Bale: I can't believe it sir, he just threw himself on that grenade like it was nothing. For the life of me, I just can't believe it.
Sgt. Michael Caine: You'd be surprised at how many men rise above themselves in a time like this. I remember, back during the first big war, me and my squadron were running the trenches a good fifty miles below Antwerp. Now we were all fairly young and green to the battlefield, but there was a young fella with us, a boy really, Billy Boltrop, who was barely a month over eighteen when he was drafted into the army. The entire first two weeks he spent his time crying with his helmet covering his face, talking thins like 'I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die'. I had never seen a boy so scared in my entire life. So a week or two later, our planes had been doing bomb runs over a forest are for a full day, and we received orders to go through that forest and flank the krauts. We went into the forest, or what was left of it, burnt trees and grass as far as the eye could see, and all of a sudden a loud bang rang over the tree line and our commander, Gert Gortrop, fell to the ground, blood spurting from his leg. He was shot by an enemy sniper. We all duck to the ground and dug ourselves into the mud, while Gortrop kept wailing in pain, and we all looked at each other with the same look in our eyes. We all wanted to get up and save him, but that was of course the enemy's plan. You see, they shot him in the leg so we'd try to save him so they could pick us off one by one. Then all of a sudden, who but Billy Boltrop, that eighteen year old boy, got up. We screamed at him to get down, telling him it was a trap, but he didn't run to Gortrop. He ran away. We thought the madness of the war had finally gotten to him and the Germans were going to pick him off, but then he turned around and said something. It's important that, that he didn't shout or scream, but said it. He said: 'Go get him please!'. And he had barely said it or machine gun fire rained out of the tree line and tore him apart. And as it happened, me and someone else ran up to Gortrop, and pulled him back safe and sound. Billy Boltrop sacrificied himself that day to save our commander, and consequently save all of us. Because despite his fear of dying, the fear that kept him unmovable for weeks, there was another fear he felt, an unspoken fear he kept secret entirely to himself.
Pvt. Christian Bale: What was it?
Sgt. Michael Caine: It was the fear... of living. Living with the knowledge that one of his comrades had died in front of him, and he hadn't done everything that he could have done, to try and save their lives.
Just give him the Oscar already.
I was really kicking myself for not seeing it in imax 
the aerial shots were beautiful 
