I saw this yesterday. I went in VERY excited. It was one of the only movies I wanted to see this summer.
VERY disappointed. The two guys with me? Ditto. “Boring” said one. “Put me to sleep.”
Coming from Christopher Nolan, it’s amazingly bad moviemaking. He focuses on three individuals or in one case, a boat with a civilian captain and his two sons. The plot careens back and forth between the three groups. With pilots crashing into the sea and ships sinking, all the underwater shots are confusing. Plus, aviators with masks are flat hard to differentiate among. (It’s one reason why George Lucas didn’t have any of his pilots in “Star Wars” ever have a mask on).
Nolan said he wasn’t making a war movie, but a movie about “survival.” Well, DiCaprio just did that with “Revenant” (an equally boring movie. There definitely are heroes: Tom Hardy runs his plane out of fuel trying to take down a bomber, and manages to land on the beach in time to surrender. Kenneth Branagh’s commander stays on the dock til the last Frenchman is evacuated. The civilian boat captain refuses to turn around when his own son is badly injured. The man who has injured his son, a shell-shocked soldier they picked up on a sinking ship, played by Cillian Murphy, does not want to go back to Dunkirk and struggles with the boy, throwing him into the hold where he hits his head (fatally as it turns out). At then end, back on English docks, Murphy asks the brother if his younger brother is ok. The boy could have responded with hate (”You DID THIS!”) but instead lies. “Yes, he’s ok.” Why heap more guilt on the soldier who still has a war to fight?
But even these acts of courage don’t capture the spirit of overcoming that the operation itself was-—as Spielberg did with the troops on Normandy. Admittedly this was an evacuation, and as Churchill (who is never mentioned until the very end) says, “Wars are not won by great evacuations.” Still, it was the LARGEST and most remarkable evacuation in history, at least maintained the ability of England to fight for five more years, and demonstrated both the strengths & weaknesses of the British and the Germans.
Despite a $150m budget you do NOT “see it on screen.” Looks like there are maybe 50,000 guys waiting to load, rather than 400,000. The most planes you see at a time are three Spitfires. When the civilian rescue fleet appears, it looks like maybe 30 boats instead of the hundreds that actually arrived.
In short, a big disappointment.
Frankly, the best war movies being made these days are Russian ones. “Brest Fortress” is one of the best war movies I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them.
Thanks for the review. Won’t waste my time on it.
youngest boy and myself watched it and loved it.
I agree LS. We saw it yesterday and I came close to leaving the theatre. Whoever did the editing on that film must have been on drugs. There was absolutely no cohesion. If you went into the movie with no knowledge of the events you came out the same way. Seriously disappointed.
Thank you for today’s money-saving tip. I’ll skip paying to see Dunkirk.
Thanks for heads up.
I will spend that $10 on a steak and grill it.
And enjoy it more than the movie.
Too bad. I’d hoped for so much more, especially from Nolan.
After reading your review I would suggest that you see this-———I saw it in in May——and loved it-———it’s about the making of a Dunkirk movie.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/their_finest_2017/
It wasn’t the son that was wounded in the small yacht, but a friend of the son’s. I thought it was great and highly recommend it.
Disappointed. Thanks for saving me the price of admission.
On a good note HACKSAW RIDGE is on HBO tonight.
I saw only 1 movie in last 15 years, which was by Dinesh D’Souza about Hillary. As one who arrived here at age 20, I never had the opportunity to learn much American History, but learned a lot in that movie.
I do not like Hollywood culture, so I refuse to subsidize them.
You wrote:
Despite a $150m budget you do NOT “see it on screen.” Looks like there are maybe 50,000 guys waiting to load, rather than 400,000. The most planes you see at a time are three Spitfires. When the civilian rescue fleet appears, it looks like maybe 30 boats instead of the hundreds that actually arrived.
The whole point of cinema is not necessarily to “wow” you with CGI effects where one “sees” 300,000 actual individual men lining up on the beach. This is the American style - no good story but plenty of boom, boom, boom replete with explosions, cars flipping, lots of robots (or Godzilla) destroying Manhattan (again, flipped cars) or fantasy films with advanced civilizations dressing up like Roman warriors.
No, this is not a typical war film where the hero shoots 5,000 Germans or Japanese without reloading his magazine.
Nolan has actually taken a story as seen from 3 main perspectives, land, sea and air.
I thought it was brilliant, well photographed, scored to excellent music and of course good acting about an amazing story. I too had high expectations and they were all met.
So maybe give Nolan some credit on the epic film?
I think I’ll skip this one. Thanks, LS.