Good cinematography Horrible script

Rating: 3/10 (31 July 2017)

I agree with the other reviewers about the cinematography so I won't go into that. I love WWII movies, and historical movies in general, and I was really looking forward to this one as I didn't know all that much about this event. The promos for the movie made me think this was going to be about the evacuation of Dunkirk by the hundreds (thousands?) of civilians. Alas, it ends up being a survival story. Don't get me wrong, the story from the point of view of the GIs is a story that needed to be told. As my 89 year old WWII vet movie companion stated, nobody should forget this event. The movie did a good job of portraying the GIs' struggle to survive.
Here's a question for you, when did this event take place? Yes, we all know it takes place during WWII, but when? Well, you won't learn that from the movie. Nor will you learn about the civilian rescuers. Not how many there were. Not their stories. Not where they came from (all over England or just a particular area?). Not how long this evacuation took. Not how many GIs were rescued. There are a couple of vague references to the civilian program and one line referencing an approximation of how many men were rescued. There wasn't even the usual post-movie paragraph giving the facts of this event. Other than a lot of men died, you won't learn much else about this event.
The movie attempts to follow the GIs on the beach, the "air" battle such as it was, and the voyage of ONE civilian boat. At the beginning of the movie there appears on-screen the numbers 1, 2 and 3 - with a time period after each one. No explanation. I sat through the entire movie thinking what the???? After the movie, and after I Googled the event, I'm guessing that those were supposed to let the viewer know the three time-periods during which the 3 separate story lines of the movie take place. But it's just a guess.
If you just want to watch a "pretty" movie, this is for you. But beyond that, as a historical movie it's just awful. The movie was confusing, disjointed, convoluted, and lacking any substance whatsoever. And the characters? There weren't any. Nobody to get the viewer involved in the movie. My takeaway from the movie was these men were sitting ducks and a whole lot of them died.
If you want to see a movie that is indirectly about Dunkirk but is world's better than this thing, see "Their Finest", it's definitely a 10 star movie.