Underdone-kirk

Rating: 6/10 (8 December 2017)

Dunkirk is a movie that will not be for all tastes. Certainly I found it a bit of a slog at times and, having grown up with a diet of almost constant war movies, I found it lacking in a number of departments.
Firstly, though, what Dunkirk gets right. The visuals are well-done and the acting very decent from all concerned. There is no fault that you can point at in regards to cinematography or on-screen realism. Everything has been carefully shot to enhance the feeling of being there, at Dunkirk, during the evacuation.
Sadly, however, that is where the film's greatest strengths lie... in its mechanical execution of the film-maker's craft.
So what did I find wrong with this movie? Well, it has little in the way of heart and soul. For a film about one of the most memorable moments in World War 2, this lack of emotional core leaves you rather nonplussed. I have seen any number of docu-dramas of wartime events that had more life in them than Nolan's effort.
It was so marked, that I suspect that is what Nolan was aiming for all along. Namely, he removed the emotion from the movie in the hope that the events would carry more weight with the viewer.
If that was the case, then at least for me, he failed. For the most part, Dunkirk plods along with at first a rather boring and slow tempo, and then with a more urgent, but somehow equally dull, pace. At no time did I feel any kind of excitement or concern for any of the characters.
In part this is because there is almost zero character development. There is also little dialogue which leaves the viewer scrabbling for visual clues as to the characters motives and goals. You don't ever end up rooting for any of the people you see on screen. If they live, or die, it doesn't matter.
That, then, is Dunkirk's biggest failing. It has no soul. A moment in history where ordinary people stood up and "did their part" for the war effort is reduced to a dull, emotionless study of the event itself. For all the humanity on display, it might as well have been made by an alien with no understanding of our species.
In addition to this soul-less aspect, the scale of the movie is also rather limited. Perhaps this was due to budgetary constraints, but you never see more than a couple of aircraft at once. There is no artillery shelling of the beaches. Although there is some strafing of the beach, it is only by one plane at a time. You rarely see many of the little ships and, at the end, when one of the survivors reads a paper that reveals over 300,000 have been evacuated, you are left thinking "How?" At no point do you get the feeling this was possible given what you see on screen.
All in all, a rather disappointing movie that lacks any real emotional connection for the viewer to latch on to. Considering how loudly, and greatly, this movie has been praised, I expected more from it than it delivered.
SUMMARY: Emotionless and rather dull. No character development, little dialogue and little real sense of danger. Nolan should stick to sci-fi.