Standard action scenes predominate over character development as Nolan views rescue at Dunkirk as more tragic than uplifting

Rating: 5/10 (4 August 2017)

I haven't seen the original "Dunkirk" film which came out in 1958, but of what I know of that plot the main focus is on a British troop's battle against the Germans before they arrive at Dunkirk, with the rescue at the beach as the stirring climax. Christopher Nolan rejected that whole approach and decided that all the action should be centered around the events that occurred at Dunkirk proper—hence, we never see one German during the entire film.
I am forced to argue that Nolan's approach is wrong-headed and despite his signature visual acumen, Dunkirk (2017) ultimately lacks punch. What happened at Dunkirk simply doesn't lend itself to much drama. Since the British were stranded on the beach and were unable to take any pro-active steps against the encroaching enemy, they basically played the role of "sitting ducks" until their miracle deliverance. Nolan's best scenes involve the British troops, unable to take cover on the beach, or lined up like sardines on the "mole" as they're unmercifully cut down by Luftwaffe pilots. The sense of fear is truly palpable as the defenseless men have nowhere to go.
It's the attendant fear, masterfully conveyed by Nolan, that grips us in the early part of the picture. But soon the scenes of dive bombing destruction give way to more conventional war action tropes, involving the sinking of various boats (the scenes of drowning victims are reminiscent of scenes from Titanic). In the middle of the action is one of the protagonists, Tommy, a British private, who survives two sinkings of boats intended to ferry the soldiers across the Channel—one boat is destroyed from the air and the other torpedoed.
Soon Nolan has Tommy along with a number of his confederates hook up with some Scottish soldiers who find a grounded fishing trawler in what I'm told (by Wikipedia) is the "intertidal zone outside of the Allied perimeter." Would soldiers have actually left the perimeter and put themselves at risk, with the unlikely hope of being able to get the trawler to float? And where do those unseen Germans come from who end up taking target practice? Somehow the soldiers inside the trawler miraculously escape being killed by machine gun fire.
The trawler sinks too but not before Gibson, a French soldier masquerading as British, gets tangled in some chains inside the trawler, and drowns. Nolan is determined to continually reiterate his "wall is hell" theme and serves up one additional destruction of a boat—this time Tommy and fellow soldier Alex surviving the destruction of a minesweeper —only to be rescued by a pleasure craft manned by its civilian captain Davidson, along with his teenage son Peter, and Peter's friend, George.
Davidson's saga forms the second in a triptych of stories, this time focusing on one of the hundreds of pleasure crafts conscripted by the British to sail across the Channel and save the beleaguered troops. In this tale, Davidson picks up a shell-shocked RAF pilot who's just been shot down by the Germans and wouldn't you know it, he can't handle the idea that they're headed right back into harm's way at the beaches of Dunkirk. Basically the pilot freaks out, hits poor George in the head while Davidson and son are trying to calm him down, and the poor kid sustains a severe head injury and ends up (as later reported in the local press) a "casualty of war." All of this unlikely turn of events seems rather heavy-handed or forced if you will, but Nolan is determined again to remind us that Dunkirk was more tragic than something to celebrate about.
The third story is told from the perspective of three RAF pilots who do battle with their Luftwaffe counterparts out above the open sea. It's noteworthy that the action takes place far from where the troops are stranded, none of whom who are able to appreciate the sacrifices the pilots make. (Since the pilots couldn't be in all places at once, they were unable to stop some of the dive bombers responsible for the all the carnage we see at the beginning of the film.) Hence, a familiar query was sounded after the battle with the troops asking the pilots, "where were you?"
Nolan's attention to detail is evident in the battle scenes in the air. But after a while, it feels a bit perfunctory and one longs for some character development in place of one plane being shot down after another. Nolan continues to commit himself to a non-glamorous view of war—when the last pilot runs out of fuel and sets his plane down—he ends up burning it so it won't fall into the hands of the enemy. And the pilot ultimately is taken prisoner (again no heroics).
In addition to lack of character development, Dunkirk suffers from the lack of a visible antagonist. Instead of the Germans, war itself becomes the antagonist and the film becomes more a generic anti-war film than a film rooted in history. If there were real heroes here, Nolan ignores them. Those would be the French troops who fought the Germans inland, to give the British time to put their rescue mission into action.
If you like seeing ships being bombed or torpedoed, scenes of men drowning, the unlikely death of a civilian at the hands of a shell-shocked soldier as well as a series of somewhat repetitious aerial battles, all presented on a non-linear time line, Dunkirk might be for you.
Ultimately I understand what Nolan is driving at—that in the larger context, the rescue at Dunkirk was still part of the overall tragedy of war. All well and good but the tragedy is conveyed through a series of standard war scenes without character development, so necessary for compelling drama.