I just saw the movie this morning.
I was disappointed that the movie wasn’t about the Battle of Dunkirk in 1658, which was, arguably, a more important battle than the later one portrayed here.
However, I thought several scenes were quite exciting and realistic. such as the air combat scenes, the scenes in which ships were sunk, and especially the bombing raids on the soldiers on the beach who had no place to take cover. At the time of the battle, the German Junkers Ju-87 dive bomber was already obsolete due to its lack of speed and maneuverability, but it certainly looked formidable from the point of view of a foot soldier sitting in its path.
However, there was almost no character development, and the scenes involving the shipwrecked soldier who accidentally killed the English teenager was downright hokey.
I also noticed that they made almost no mention of the enemy. The word “Nazi” was never spoken, and the only time I remember hearing the word “German” was when some British soldiers accused a French solder of being a German spy. I also couldn’t see any Nazi hooked crosses on the tails of the German planes, although these were usually shown in the distance and too far away to view them in detail—and there wasn’t a hooked cross anywhere in the film.
But one thing I certainly liked about the movie was that it was devoid of sex scenes and nude scenes, and I don’t believe I heard any profanity, although I didn’t understand all of the words, given the English brogue in which everyone spoke.
It might be because you're supposed to focus on the internal struggle of wanting to survive a desperate situation, or maybe they were aiming to make it that much more terrifying -- the unknown is always more terrifying than the known and all that. Either way, I thought it was an interesting take because in most WW2 movies, even the generally accepted great ones, the Germans are constantly portrayed as bumbling, inept, running around yelling the same "especially-German sounding" few phrases that the extras were drilled on. No military could ever slug it out with almost the rest of the world for year after bloody year being as lousy as movie Nazis almost invariably are.