One of Nolan's best

Rating: Null/10 (26 July 2017)

I've always had problems with Nolan. He uses too much exposition, it feels like he makes things overly complicated for pretense, and he just seems to overstuff his films with more and more (the last film that didn't suffer from this was Memento). Here, he finally makes a film that seems to go out of its way to not touch on any of those things. The premise is simple and we are out in the middle of various characters at wartime. Many scenes go on without dialogue. Further, this is one of his shortest films, definitely in quite a long time. I don't think it's a perfect film (sometimes the mostly effective score seems a bit much and at times the film would benefit from not jumping back and forth between story lines). However, the more simple approach taken here actually elevates his characters to become actual human beings rather than thematic symbols, which is also something that he has suffered from in the past. It's not an overly emotional film at all, but I found myself more emotionally invested in these characters than I have in previous films. The ending montage seems like it was a bit overdirected, but other than that I left the theater feeling quite satisfied. only time will tell how my feelings change (and with Nolan films, many times they do).