Saving Private Ryan it's not!

Rating: 1/10 (27 July 2017)

It's amazing how hype, a vastly overrated reputation, and a jackhammer sound score can mesmerize some naive souls into believing this wretched exercise is some kind of masterpiece of avant-garde filmmaking. If Saving Private Ryan rates A+, Dunkirk rates a D–.
The stage is set with a clumsy repetition of introductory titles (rather than briefly showing the lead-up to Dunkirk) before jumping into one of the main "character's" retreat to the beaches. I say "character" because, like the others, this guy is a cipher — there is ZERO characterization in this film. All are about wooden as the masts on the private yachts — might as well be animatron mannequins populating a haphazard stitching of action sequences devoid of any narrative structure (avant-garde or otherwise). Any halfwit with a budget and some CGI can stage engrossing battle scenes these days, but Nolan's random montage generates no real suspense — this is masked over with a relentless, buzzsaw sound score designed to get your blood up and compensate for the film's glaring faults — it doesn't, unless you're a Brave New World drone conditioned by the Feelies.
Implausible motivation: the shell-shocked soldier rescued by the private yacht revolts against going to Dunkirk, actually killing one of the young crewmembers and then we cut to yet another redundant Spitfire/Heinkel/Messerschmitt engagement. Back on the yacht, what has happened? Has the mutinous soldier commandered the yacht? Are the captain and his son outraged by the murder? NO! There's nothing here — no requisite emotion, no resolution to this "drama," nothing but close-ups of deadpan faces, another problem with this turkey — like the old 70mm epics (How the West Was Won), IMAX is not the medium for close-ups, yet Nolan gives an over abundance of 100-meter ECUs! And what little dialogue exists in the film is lame, mumbled and almost unintelligible.
Perhaps worst of all is how he bungled the dramatic rescue by a flotilla of private boaters — the core of this story. We could have had Churchill's appeal, the humble yeomen assembling on the docks with a mixture of trepidation and courage — instead, the boats suddenly appear all at once, deus ex machina, at the beaches, with no depiction of the rescue at all.
I suffered through Dark Knight Rises and the 3-hour torture fest Interstellar (the most "intelligent sci-fi film since 2001: Space Odyssey" NOT!), and I will never endure another Nolan mish-mash again! They say he began making films at age 7 — he is still a callow, indulgent juvenile with a camera, big bucks and dismal mastery of cinematic art. I pity the poor souls who misconstrue his efforts as some kind daring Orson Wells/Maya Derren innovation, but there's no accounting for masochism.