Dunkirk, more like Dung-Crap!

Rating: 2/10 (29 January 2018)

I have no idea why this movie received good reviews. Let me start with the good. This movie looked and sounded great in I-Max, and I saw this movie on $5 Tuesday. That's the end of the good. Now to the bad. This movie had no characters. I felt zero emotional connection to anyone in this movie. I didn't care if anyone lived or died or anything. Mark Rylance's (the BFG) character was the only one who was halfway interesting. He was the only character who had a decent amount of dialogue in the film, who had a clear goal, and who made decisions. The other character that had more than 5 lines in the picture was Kenneth Branagh's. He seemed utterly pointless. It seemed like he was watching the movie, and his purpose was just to say a cheesy lines about "Home" every once in a while. Tom Hardy's character was boring and repetitive, only to predictably save the day in the end. Because this movie is so messed up, it is really hard to decide who the main character is, but if I had to decide, it'd be the guy we see 1st. He is very forgettable. He looks and acts almost identical to his friend and almost everyone in the whole movie. He meets his friend while he is taking a dump. This is not a joke. So the main character doesn't poop. He stops and helps his new friend bury a body. And the guy doesn't poop the whole movie. And him and his new friend just try to escape the whole movie. That leads me to my second point: there is no plot. It's just a bunch of explosions. There's more plot in a Transformers movie. 'Poop guy' and 'bury dead body guy' just go from ship to ship trying to live. By the way, the movie is almost over before 'bury dead body guy' says anything. So these guys try to live, Kenneth Branagh stands on a dock and says things that don't matter, Mark Rylance picks up survivors in his boat, and Tom Hardy shoots other planes, while in his plane, over and over and over again, while not being seen or heard. And that's your movie. I kept waiting for the opening action sequence to be over. I kept waiting for it to slow down a little and have some exposition, but it never did. It was like I missed the beginning and just tuned into the climax of a long, humorless, silent picture. That's not to say that a movie can't be action packed and be great. U-571 is an example of a nearly non-stop, action packed, WWII movie, thrill ride. U-571 managed to have memorable and distinct characters with different purposes. U-571 had a plot with a clear goal and twists and turns. If Dunkirk could've just cut out some of the unnecessary bits, like Kenneth Branagh, and had the 1st half hour be set up and character development, then it could've been really good. But as it was, I didn't care about any of it. I kept watching English soldiers die and thinking, "I don't care. This movie didn't make me care." As simple as the plot for Dunkirk was, the movie was really confusing. You'd think if you're going for an exciting, action thriller, that a simple linear plot would suffice. This movie jumps all over the timeline without giving any hint that it just made a jump in time. Christopher Nolan does a great job of jumping all over the timeline in his movie Memento. In Memento, he manages to keep things coherent and engaging. Not so here. This is just disappointing. The time jumping is completely unnecessary here. What little dialogue there is in this film is really hard to hear because of thick accents, loud explosions, masks over faces, and the music being really loud in the mix. With a really simple plot that is really hard to follow and characters with zero development or even distinguishing traits, I found myself in a really big struggle to care about what I was watching, even with incredible imagery and sound design. Yet, the whole time, the movie was telling me what I was watching was really exciting with it's music score. And that leads me to my last point: I hated the music. It pains me to say that because I usually love Hans Zimmer, especially under the direction of Christopher Nolan. There is virtually no melody in this score. It's relentless and annoying. I guess I can't blame Zimmer, considering he was just scoring to picture. Imagine watching The Dark Knight, but during the entire movie all you heard was The Joker's theme, non-stop. That's what it's like. The whole soundtrack may as well just be an air raid siren. And it's not just the music. The sound effects, as incredible as they were, were also loud, annoying, and relentless. At times, I found myself covering my ears. I thought, "Why am I paying money to cover my ears? What I'm covering my ears to is what I paid for." You know what movie is better than this: all the movies I have seen this year. Valerian and The Mummy were even better. They were at least fun. The best movie I've seen this Summer is War for the Planet of the Apes, but you really need to see all the Apes pictures to get the full enjoyment out of that one. The next best is Spider-Man: Homecoming, but maybe you're not up to date with the Marvel movies. In that case, see Wonder Woman. You don't need to see the other DC movies to enjoy that one. But what ever you do, don't see Dunkirk. I beg of you not to give that garbage your support.