Bland, Boring, Revisionist Take on Dunkirk

Rating: 5/10 (8 August 2017)

As a WWII buff (listening to "The Longest Day: Music From The Classic War Films" as I type), I had expected to be first in line when this film came out but I hesitated after reading initial reviews. While extremely positive, many reviews commented on aspects of the film, from the non-linear narrative structure to the choice of characters focused on, that left me feeling that I would not enjoy the movie. I finally broke down and saw it because of its continued box office performance but found it as lackluster as I'd feared.
Present-day WWII movies just don't hold a candle to the classics (All Quiet on the Western Front, The Longest Day, Bridge on the River Kwai, Patton, and my all-time favorite film, The Great Escape), nor even big-budget mediocre fare from relatively recent times like A Bridge Too Far or The Battle of Britain. There's way too much pretentious nonsense in modern war movies. Every filmmaker these days has to make a "statement" about the horrors of war, as if intelligent viewers weren't already aware of that fact. Therefore, instead of a good story with appealing and memorable characters we get one that focuses on "the coward," because in the modern-day mindset, anyone who acts in war with dignity and courage and self-sacrifice is seen as unrealistic and somehow a dupe of the evil powers that be.
None of those characters was remotely interesting or appealing and the time shifts were totally unnecessary. In addition, the omnipresent music was a total turn-off. There was never any chance to actually hear the real sounds of war, which includes silence and the banter of soldiers trying to make the best of a bad situation. All told, this is the most-overrated movie I've seen in years. Thank God I have the classics on VHS and DVD.