Dull, uninvolving and nonsensical in spite of one or two moments

Rating: 2/10 (15 August 2017)

There are no spoilers in this review. We know how the whole thing ends or, if you don't, stop reading and get a history book. This film is not the way to learn anyway.
I had high hopes of Dunkirk. People were saying it is a great film. I remain baffled as to why. I did not quite want to walk out of Dunkirk, but I was bored and I can't say I enjoyed it. It has too many fundamental failings. Here's why.
Firstly (let's start with something positive), the good points.
There is a bit of spectacular photography. Some of the shots of ships are well done.
The acting - Having said that there's not a lot of "acting" at all. Come to think of it there should be a lot more "acting". The characters should be more terrified, angry, resilient, defiant, chipper etc. None of this comes across but I think that's the director's fault, not the actors'.
There are some interesting vignettes. They stand alone as well-executed scenes but, as I'll discuss later, they don't add up to much.
Er, that's about it.
Now, the things that just added up to make the film annoying, dull and uninvolving.
Characterisation - I just wasn't invested in any of the characters. The "lead" in the form of the soldier that we follow through the trials and tribulations of the evacuation is just not a sympathetic character. He is a chancer trying to get ahead of the queue. Quite apart from the fact that he's certainly not representative of the troops at Dunkirk, it's unnecessary; he's a weasely little character when there's a much bigger story going on. The rest of the characters are largely two-dimensional. The sub-plot on the boat, brings in another unsympathetic character, is difficult to believe in, is a distraction and has nothing to do with the evacuation. If we needed character sub-plots, we'd have been much better off looking at the people back home in England, their fears, motivations etc. and we'd understand the story of Dunkirk better.
There is also no sense of the real fear, desperation, defiance etc that must have been foremost in the minds of the men on the beach. In fact there is very little emotion in the film at all. We follow a couple of soldiers about for a bit but we get no sense that men are awaiting the lottery of the next Luftwaffe bombing raid, losing their comrades or wondering if they will get home to their wives or whether a Panzer division is about to come over the horizon.
Scale - there is absolutely NO sense of the scale of the evacuation. The actual evacuation involved some 400,000 men. We see very few... really, very few. We hear a man on a stretcher takes the space of seven standing men but the ships leaving the harbour are clearly not full; there are just a few guys standing by the railings. At Dunkirk, men were so crammed onto ships they had to leave their backpacks behind. Surely the budget could have run to a few more extras or a bit of CGI. We see three British aeroplanes and a couple of German ones!
Story - there is no real story to invest in. Quite apart from the intensely annoying non-linear narrative, there is no sense of what actually happened at Dunkirk. We never get to understand why it happened, why the commanders did what they did or what choices they had, the RAF's role, the French army's role, how the fleet of little ships came about, why Hitler didn't attack by land or anything really.
Non-linear narrative - oh my goodness me! Why? Don't get me wrong I enjoy a well-constructed non-linear narrative, but this isn't it. The story jumps around for no readily apparent reason. We see things twice but then there are two planes at one point so we're not quite sure if it's the first plane or the second one. It's a mess. Again, some interesting little vignettes but not adding up to any coherent story we can invest in.
And then there are all the other little nit-picking bits that made the film annoying and distracting. A soldier salutes a very senior colonel without his hat on (not done!) and then casually imparts a load of information without once saying "Sir". Would a senior naval officer in 1940 really say "we're stuffed"? Spitfires could fire their guns for a total of about 17 seconds and did not have apparently unlimited ammunition, nor could they keep flying with no engine. If a plane passes you at altitude (at what? 120-150mph?) and then ditches, it will not be 100 yards or so from your boat, it'll be well over a mile away. How is the boat captain an expert in German aerial tactics; his explanation makes no sense. When you're not invested in a film, you notice these things.
Oh yes and other people have commented on the score. What score? It's just noise except for the final section is it supposed to be rousing or patriotic? It's just Elgar's Nimrod played at about 1/4 speed. Score by Hans Zimmer?.. not really.
So all in all while this film does have one or two moments. It adds up to considerably less than the sum of its parts. I had started giving this three stars but the more I think about it, I don't think it's worth even that. Not only could it have been so much more, it's actually quite a badly made film. Why on earth are people giving it high ratings?