In 2017, over 330.000 film viewers were stuck in a cinema, surrounded by boredom, can they be rescued?

Rating: 4/10 (21 July 2017)

It's hard to understand critic ratings of 10/10 while this movie undeniably lacks quality on some very important aspects. Let me start off with some positive notes:

IMAX: The impact of the bullets and bombs felt as if you were really there. The entire movie is shot in a very realistic way.

Opening scene: The suspense, music and cinematography all came together very well in the opening scene, which really made me excited for the scenes to come.

Acting: Poor acting can easily distract the audience from their experience of being in a certain time/place. But there was not a single moment in which an actor did something out of character. All expressions were very believable. Great acting!

But there were some major aspects I had issues with:

Characters: The characters did not have any background story and there's hardly any dialogue to give some insight. The main characters are therefore replaceable for any other random soldier on that beach. I do not expect an elaborate introduction of every character, certainly not in a historical war movie, but the downside is that the audience cannot empathize with the main characters. I really didn't care for one of them to die. I've seen hundreds of soldiers die in earlier scenes of the movie, why would one or two more (just as hollow and unknown as any other soldier) bother me a bit? It's no must to focus on character development, as long as the other aspects of the movie make up for the lack of it. In Dunkirk that sadly was not the case.

Editing: Sometimes it was hard to follow which moment in time is shown, because the movie abruptly cuts between three perspectives, therefore even showing some events twice. I find this non-linear storytelling and continuity breaks unnecessary and poorly executed.

Repetitive: Much scenes are identical or slightly different from another. Especially the flight scenes did not add much to the story. Instead I rather would've seen some scenes at the front-line with troops actually defending the beach instead of just a bunch of scared, helpless troops waiting for the next plane to fly over and bomb the shite out of them. Keeping out the Germans at the front-line is just as much a part of the story of Dunkirk and it would've given us a chance to actually see the enemy and get some awesome battle scenes.

Music: Usually I enjoy Zimmer's score. But in this movie there was no moment of silence, not a moment to break the suspense. Especially in IMAX, my ears were buzzing hours after I left the cinema. Was this intentional? Was it supposed to feel like one big action scene without any breaks, to get the same feeling of those soldiers, trapped between battles unable to take a break, constantly in stress of a nearing attack? Well, than Nolan did succeed. But I found it very annoying.

Overall I believe this movie is highly overrated, due to many biased Nolan fans and critics blindly hopping on the hype-train. I found it a very boring movie. The lack of an interesting plot or any interesting characters sadly wasn't compensated enough by the impressive audiovisuals. Rescue yourself from boredom and don't watch this movie!