Extraordinarily tense war film told through individual stories

Rating: 9/10 (26 July 2017)

Although touched upon in some films in the past, the British-French evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 as France neared total collapse at the hands of the Germany Army in WWII has never been given the kind of comprehensive and vivid treatment that Nolan's explosive war film does.
This film fully captures the anxiety, desperation and seeming hopelessness that the British Army faced in its efforts to save its troops in France and prepare to defend their own soil as Hitler's armies defeated the French and overran the European mainland. It does so by giving the audience a close-up of the evacuation from as many vantage points as possible. These include the British troops trying to cross the English Channel (told from both masses and a small group) as well as civilians who used their own vessels to aid a depleted British Navy in rescuing the troops and from the air in which British spitfire pilots fought gallantly to protect British ships and troops from German aircraft and finally from the British high command desperately trying to pull off a miracle.
In the air strike scenes, Nolan makes the screaming sound of a German dive bomber as menacing and tension-inducing as any director has done in recent memory. The tension is amplified to a raw crescendo by Hans Zimmer's brilliantly realized soundtrack. Equally impressive is the sense of dread created in individual troops trying to escape but facing one seemingly fatal catastrophe after another. As far as performances go, this isn't any one actor's film, though everyone is great with exceptional work by Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles and Mark Rylance. Tom Hardy has a fairly important role though he spends most of the film muzzled by a fighter pilot mask. The film's achievement lies in creating a wide-ranging account of courage, sacrifice and perseverance in the face of almost-certain disaster. It doesn't offer much speechifying or jingoistic sentiments, just the hard-boiled realism of war.
The story of a hardened and weary army trying to escape to defend its own shores might not resonate right away with audiences unfamiliar with the war, but this film is a lot more than just a mere depiction of history. It's also a master class in dramatic spectacle and the recreation of an epic tale of survival in a war that at that moment seemed likely to end very soon. Splendidly realized, it is not to be missed.