Good but Not Great

Rating: 8/10 (29 July 2017)

Christopher Nolan has proved himself to be one of the most talented filmmakers of his generation. However, like every filmmaker he has his quirks. "Dunkirk" is the first time Nolan has attempted a movie with real history behind it. It's rare to get a World War II movie that takes place before the US enters the war. Yet, somehow his quirks shined through here louder than ever before.
Nolan's war epic is filled with memorable characters played by actors who are regulars to his films like Tom Hardy as an air force pilot, Michael Caine in an uncredited voice cameo, and Cillian Murphy as a shellshocked soldier. The film keeps the names of characters fairly vague, perhaps because many of the characters don't have an exact real world counterpart. Rather each character is created from the experiences of real life people, which is a skilled technique to maintain the integrity of events while limiting the actual characters such that the movie doesn't feel bloated.
We also get a completely brilliant score by Hans Zimmer who once again knocks it out of the park. He is easily one of the best composers for movies ever. Zimmer always seems to know the exact note to hit to get you emotionally invested.
However, not every trait of Nolan's can be considered good. Sometimes he can make some of his weaknesses work to his advantage. Although I like good dialogue as much as the next person, he has a tendency to rely entirely too much on it to rather that using visuals. This worked in a film like "Inception" where he needed to convey a set of rules in a clear, concise way to the audience. However, it didn't work as well in The Dark Knight movies. And it definitely doesn't work in "Dunkirk"
And while Nolan has become a much better action director since "Batman Begins", his action scenes still have little to no lasting impact. "Dunkirk"'s action all lies within this "meh" area. You can get invested in the characters and that causes you to care what happens, but the actual action just seem to happen then ends with little or no fanfare.
Finally, Nolan seems to have tried some sort of artistic editing with this film. Time jumps occur inexplicably that break up the narrative and jolt the audience out of the experience. The movie is for the most part very linear in it's narrative which makes the random time jumps all the more baffling.
Still, this is a good movie. More on par with "Interstellar" as far as total quality than something like "Inception". It's not one of Nolan's best, but even a weak Nolan film is better than what most studios put out by a wide margin.