emotionless, dull, tedious and frankly poor on every level

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2017)

Not being a Christopher Nolan slappie, I was able to judge this effort all on its own merit. Watching what hits the screen plays out like a tedious and poorly constructed cable documentary. Honestly, there is literally not one ounce of character development or establishment at all. It's just a dry depiction of three round robin events that cascades from one harrowing circumstance to the next. one revolving around a fighter pilot, another around a foot soldier and his French imposter hanger-on trying to survive and the other about an elder statesmen boat owner and his efforts to aid the cause. The only one that is even remotely interesting involves the boat owner, his son and poor lil' George. In fact, the only character name given as to remember it was poor sad lil' George. I didn't make it to the final credits but I wonder if the rest of the cast of characters was simply titled "nameless soldier"? Having no depth means limited emotional impact and that does a disservice to the real life heroes this movie tries to honor. What alleviates the shear dullness of what is depicted often comes in the form of a racing soundtrack. It's as if the frantic music is your cue on how to react because it's hard to tell by just watching the visuals. The movie itself is all one grim repetitive note. After a while, the grinding soundtrack does start to annoy and pushes towards headache inducing territory. Is that some kind of sloppy film making trick? Trick the audience in to feeling uneasy using other senses rather than simply writing an impactful story? It IS dull and it can hardly be called an actual movie given how it's structured but it's not offensively bad and does its job showing the grim events of Dunkirk.