No Bravado. No chest beating

Rating: 9/10 (3 August 2017)

Dunkirk. It was raining so there was no golf and what do two elderly chaps and a vibrant youth do? They go to the movies!
Dunkirk goes alright too.
WWII actually started well before the Americans got involved and this is the story of a bit of the bit before they did. In fact there are no Americans in the movie so there is an absence of rock-jawed selfless heroism. Rather, there is stoicism from men and boys in cardigans and cheery nurses who serve tea to survivors.
The Germans are still very cross about the way they were dealt with after WWI. They are very well led and as a result they have cornered some 400,000 British, French and Belgians at Dunkirk. The French are fighting a rearguard action to keep the Germans at bay. It's going badly. They are surrounded on a beach at Dunkirk. There are a lot of them. About 400,000 troops. On a beach. Being bombed. And if they DO get off the beach they are bombed and torpedoed. So things are bleak. Churchill has said that they can evacuate, maybe, 30,000.
The movie is about the evacuation and it really happened.
Life on the beach is uncertain. They are being bombed and machine gunned and JU87's are largely unchallenged and if that's what they actually sounded like I now have a small idea of why they were so terrifying and I was watching a movie and not being bombed. There are a few RAF fighters in the air but a lot are held back because it seems likely that they will be needed later. In any case they don't have much fuel and can only stay for a little while before they have to fly home. They have some successes, but there are costs.
One soldier who has had enough of being on the beach strips off and walks into the water and attempts to swim home. There was a special poignancy about this.
Ships are sent to rescue the isolated troops and there is only one jetty (called 'the Mole') so evacuation is slow. It also means that the ships are all in one place and are pretty easy to bomb. Or torpedoed.
The Royal Navy decides to commandeer anything that can float and is able to get close enough to a beach to be clambered aboard by the troops on the beach. There are fishing boats, leisure cruisers and yachts all manned by the sort of people who you would imagine might own this sort of boat. About 700 of these small craft take part, and the movie is really about them. It was all I could do not to stand and cheer when they appear out of the mist. I have actually been to a place on the Thames where some of them departed
The soldiers and their unlikely rescuers are bombed and torpedoed and shot. Everyone tries very hard not to be the subject of a telegram or a glowing article in a local paper. There are cups of tea and these are strangely reassuring.
There are submarines too, but their presence is known only by the results.
The overall effect is the first 20 Minutes of 'Saving Private Ryan' going for about 90 minutes. There is no chest-beating heroism. No bravado. No speeches from the dying. Sometimes people just do whatever they can to simply survive. Sometimes they are selfless with an almost understated courage and do things that are unexpected.
But mostly it's about 700 little boats manned by normal people, men and boys in cardigans, sailing across the English Channel and back to save people
About 340,000 British, French and Belgian troops were rescued, mainly by little private boats. This is a very good result. However it does mean that 1 in 10 were killed or captured