Did I watch a different movie to the critics?

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2017)

So I was rather excited to finally see this, seeing the amount of praise and hype heaped on it by critics at time of release.
All I can imagine is they watched a different movie. Because the movie I watched was where 3 British Spitfires, one of which defies the laws of physics when it runs out of fuel but still keeps fighting and flying until the end of the movie (yeah ... no plane's don't work like that!), fought about 3 German BF-109's and a Heinkel bomber for 1.5 hours set against the backdrop of a few hundred British servicemen patiently waiting on the beach to be picked up by a fishing boat driven by a man and two boys zig-zagging in between 2 British destroyers, while having my ears assaulted by the same few bars of "I can't believe it's not heist scene from the start of the The Dark Knight" dramatic score played in an endless loop for the duration of the movie.
If the above sounds very reductionist, it's because that's basically what this movie is: Minimal. To be fair there are 2 ships that get sunk and who's personnel get rescued by the above fishing boat while all this is going on, and you also get Kenneth Branagh chewing up the scenery on a regular basis, but I can't overstate though just how lacking in scale and sense of drama this movie is. It's definitely not this grand epic that it's been made out to be, it feels more like it wants to be an art-house film but found itself lumbered with a mega-budget to try and use up.