Dunkirk

Rating: 8/10 (3 April 2018)

A crispy clean, thunder sounding of a war movie. It made me almost regret not watching it in theaters. The blu-ray of this movie made my tv sound like a home theater system. Dunkirk tells the story from three different points of view. A gaunty British soldier, a civilian rescue boat, and a fighter pilot. The thing that makes it unique is that each point of view is different lengths of time. They are a week, a day, and an hour respectfully. I was initially confused about the length for each viewpoint. But I realized that it is like having a race between a turtle, a runner, and a car. The car is the farthest, the runner is closer, and the turtle is the closest. The thing is that they each start at the same time and finish at the same time. And each situation and viewpoint intertwine with each other. The editing for that must have been a challenge and hats off to the editor. Other than the excellence of a technical cinematic experience, the film didn't do much for me. I didn't feel any real dread or tension during the times when it should have, some scenes went too much longer than they should have but the big thing was the rating. For me, there is always a "what if?" aspect to war movies, especially WWII movies, that are PG-13. As if the director is not willing to make it as realistic as possible (I should look into why Chris Nolan didn't do that. Maybe the battle of Dunkirk wasn't that bloody and I'm just a bloodthirsty kind of guy). But that really did take away the validity for me. There are bombs and bullets going off and the soldiers appear unscathed. There is no sense of consequence, just bleakness. The sense of life comes from the excellent sound, as if you are actually part of the group ducking away from the fighter jets that come across every once in awhile to take out the troops.