A hollow WW2 film.

Rating: 6/10 (25 March 2020)

The age old saying for me is that "has it aged like a fine wine". This movie for me has not at all. Many people here have rating the movie 10/10 (saying it's as good as Godfather etc.) Many of the reviews were when it came out. They argue that the production design and sound mixing/editing transport you to the war. Yes that's great and all but it kind of is expected from a modern WW2 film with a 150 million budget. Some even argue that the lack of emotion and character building is the intention which is quite simply asinine in my opinion. Seriously you would rather have this movie than the same movie with relatable, likable characters? Movie could have worked a lot better if it was a straight forward narrative.
Setting is a one character not the only character in a story. I get it they have to wait to be rescued and feel paranoid/fear for their life. Great what else? Nothing. I literally don't remember a character besides Kenneth Branagh/Cillian Murphy but that's only because they seemed to have had the most lines of dialogue and are big names. Let alone the obvious reduction in scale as others have said, just look up Dunkirk and see the casualty list. All could have been added with CGI but Nolan is approaching levels where no one challenges his production anymore.
The movie is very imbalanced (3 separate stories) and is everything I'm hating in movies. A massive spectacle that where the movie is written around the spectacle itself. Nolan didn't write a story about a set of characters in the Dunkirk setting. He wrote a movie of Dunkirk and then wrote characters that could fit into it. It's like I'm watching a Wikipedia page movie.
The worst scene in the movie that really bugged me showed the complete lack of emotional binding characters was when Cillian Murphy accidentally kills the child (PTSD) on the boat. The driver barley cares he just sort of looks at it happen and just goes on despite the fact he let the kid come for some dumb reason anyways. Come on 10/10??? Give me a break.