Good, Not Great

Rating: 5/10 (27 July 2017)

My wife and I went to see the current Dunkirk film as an IMAX presentation this past weekend. I went hoping to see a great film and left somewhat disappointed. What could've been a great film, turned out to be only a good film. As has been mentioned by some there is precious little if any character development and I mean very little. Kenneth Branagh has a very small part as a British naval commander overseeing the Navy's part in the evacuation from the beaches at Dunkirk. The score if I could be called that, it's not so much musical as much as pulsating noise very much like Jaws. The story arc is comprised of three different viewpoints of the evacuation: air sea and land. While this is somewhat compelling on the surface, without some details and character development it ends up being spread far too thin. Some things that were confusing or inaccurate: there is a curious back and forth between day and night scenes, but my take was that all three stories (land, sea and air) were supposedly happening simultaneously? That and those few British warships shown don't actually seem to fight. They do a good job of getting bombed and are shown sinking, but not fighting. Come on... I realize that there are few tangible assets (planes and ships) remaining from the WWII era, but surely British destroyers weren't sitting ducks for Stukas? One WANTS to like this film. The history is real and the reality of evacuation of an entire army compelling, but for us, it just didn't work. There is nothing from Churchill, no Admiralty meetings: the details are simply inferred. I'd love to be more upbeat about it, but can't. Sorry...