Very Very Disappointed

Rating: 1/10 (10 September 2017)

I was so spectacularly disappointed with this film and found so many areas of its story just so badly executed. Its so sad to see how films like this create an almost placebo like effect with movie goers falling over themselves to describe them as being the most breathtaking cinematic events they have ever seen when in reality they are just simply passable. Why am I saying this? I feel that Christopher Nolan failed in an almost epic scale to show the true scale of men, machines and vessels that were on those beaches during the evacuation. At no time did It feel that there were anymore than 500 men on the beaches and this itself was so poor and ineptly executed. If this film had been made 30 years ago by a seasoned director then there would have literally been 4000 extras used to create the atmosphere and cinematography required, and yet this film just relied on some CGI of a few hundred?
There were several scenes that seriously made absolutely no sense for example hundreds of men all lined up on the jetty in possession of their rifles ( 303 Lee Enfields ) and when the inevitable German Stuka bomber made its way towards them on a bombing run all of them (apart from one bloke) instead of aiming their hundreds of rifles towards the air and at least giving something back to the enemy before their fates were sealed, they all just decided to duck and hold their tin hats? It was just stupid and not a human response in conflict. There were no rudimentary light machine gun positions with Bren guns to provide any form of token anti-aircraft screen and it was just really really poor. Im not looking for the film to be some gung ho war film but it deserved to be realistic and it wasn't.
Kenneth Brannaghs role in the film felt was under whelming and just didn't work. I found his acting his usual one dimensional self when playing an historical British figure although the one he played in this was just a fictional character. Again Nolan invented parts of the story as at no point did any Sea Lord or Admiral set foot on the beaches to either orchestrate or pass on instructions or messages, this again showed just how weak the story-telling was.
I found the idea that there were only three Spitfires available on that given day just stupid and again resembled nothing like what actually happened.
The way the story jumped around and Cillian Murphys slight back story ( one scene from when he was picked up ) was again poorly handled and just didn't work.
Again the director spectacularly failed to impress upon us the true scale of what it was like to be there and also at the end the actual number of small crafts that were involved. The scene where Mark Rylance looks across the horizon at a gaggle of no more than 30 boats was just totally underwhelming.
The scenes where the soldiers go onto the beached trawler was quite frankly non-sensical, were the British soldiers practicing their marksmanship and if so why??? Bearing in mind the last thing any troops who had just been in combat for the past few weeks would be needing to do whilst sat on a beach waiting for rescue was to worry about re-zeroing their weapons?? Or was it the advancing Germans? Again why would German troops be looking at practicing their marksmanship skills when they were already in contact and about to re-engage with the enemy? The whole trawler thing was just so inept especially when the troops only decided to get out of it when it was literally submerged?
For anyone who even in passing studied the Dunkirk evacuation this film was an utter mess but even worse it really failed to honour the story and the lives of those involved.
There is a terrible lack of talent in film making these days, people don't dare question such films and like sheep just follow the hype....