Best & Most Realistic War Film Of The Current Century. Non-Stop Tension. Perfect 10.

Rating: 10/10 (21 August 2019)

By the standards I set for the depiction of war on film, this is a perfect movie. This film needs no love story, or 30 minutes of background monologue from Tom Hanks, or cheesy soundtrack music for marketing purposes. This is 100 minutes of tension, fear, uncertainty and confusion. In the fog of war, there is no room for all of that sentimentality that Spielberg and other filmmakers have been propagating for decades in war flicks. So, maybe your mom or your girlfriend won't find this wartime experience enjoyable... ok, so don't ask them to share it with you. Too many filmmakers think they are being clever by placating studio executives and/or ratings boards and softening their films. Afterwards, they brag about the love story that afforded them more violence or an extra 45 minutes in the theaters. In an attempt to make a movie with something for everyone, they end up with a film that is somewhat inauthentic when portraying the actual war. In reality, guys that sit around telling stories and staring at black-and-white photos in a war-zone, die in that war-zone.
In 'Dunkirk' (2017), Christopher Nolan avoids all of the mistakes of past directors when depicting war on film. 'Saving Private Ryan' (1998) is one of my favorite films, and I gave it an 8 rating on IMDB. An 8 rating sometimes represents a film that could have been perfect, but fell short for some reason. In the case of 'Private Ryan', the film starts authentic and becomes more of a family film. That's stupid - we don't send children to war. We don't take our girlfriends or our mothers to war. We don't take an orchestra to play uplifting music before we charge, or sad music while we talk about our time back home. 'Dunkirk' keeps the tension and tone for the full 100 minutes. No sappy love stories or cheesy music - just war and the effects of war on individuals.
'Dunkirk' (2017) also contains the best non-verbal acting in an war film that I have ever seen. For decades, we depicted war through the designer glasses of Hollywood - where everyone speaks clear English and all soldiers look like movie stars. WWII was a WORLD war, including many countries and languages. Add some hearing damage from explosions, and people had to learn to communicate with their eyes and body language. Non-verbal communication doesn't always translate well through film, so Hollywood dumbs everything down for the viewer with dialog. Much like war, "Dunkirk' requires complete attention to detail. Some viewers will completely miss entire subplots of the film by looking at their phones instead of watching the eye contact between two characters from across a boat. So be it - war isn't for everyone, and this film was made for people to experience war on film.
Modern technology allows 'Dunkirk' (2017) to create the authentic sights and sounds of planes and bombs that are period-specific to WWII. Lightweight mountable cameras helped to create the best aerial dog-fights in a film since Howard Hughes set the standard over 60 years ago. In our era of technology, most directors choose to post-produce effects with computers. 'Dunkirk' kept the computers to a minimum. Apparently, Christopher Nolan is aware that war isn't always symmetrical or pretty.
After writing a couple of hundred in-depth movie reviews, I am getting less and less comfortable awarding a point for "My Personal Favorite" movies. I am a 'math guy', and 1 point is 10% of a perfect 10 rating - it's significant. I have only awarded about 5 of those points so far, and I may go back and remove them later. But, I don't know how to quantify, by category or numeric value, just how refreshing it is to see a film that doesn't pander to executives trying to capture the largest possible audience, or editing down to score a PG-13 rating. My rating system doesn't have a way to award a point for being so much better at depicting realism than every other film in the genre, while using less technology. So, until I find a better way to quantify it's greatness, I am going to give 'Dunkirk' (2017) that extra point for being my new favorite war film. Perfect 10 Rated War Film.
RealReview Posting Scoring Criteria:
Acting - 1/1;
Casting - 1/1;
Directing - 1/1;
Story - 1/1;
Writing/Screenplay - 1/1;
Total Base Score = 5
Modifiers (+ or -):
Cinematography: +1;
Technical Effects/Make Up: +1 (Small mountable cameras on old places. Less was more.);
Believability/Consistency: +1;
Importance To Genre: +1 (Possibly the best depiction of war on film.);
A Personal Favorite: +1;
Total RealReview Rating: 10