There are better Dunkirk movies to watch

Rating: 5/10 (3 January 2018)

I was bitterly disappointed by this movie, not least by the fact that Christopher Nolan is its director. I expected much more intense engagement with an epic story. Instead I was left barely touched.
The cinematography is good, the acting decent, but where's the reflection of the spirit of the evacuation? The beaches were full of abandoned equipment and not as clean as in this movie. Never mind the small historical inaccuracies like yellow-nosed Messerschmitts or Heinkel bombers firing canons. The Luftwaffe was indeed very present above Dunkirk, and not with lonely bomber sorties. And usually fighters belly-landed on sand and did not use their undercarriage.
I believe "Weekend at Zuydcoote" (aka 'Week-end at Dunkirk', 1964) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo captures the sense abandonment a little better and we indeed get to see civilians in Dunkirk who are totally absent in this movie. "Atonement"'s (2007) single sequence of the beach is a fantastic piece of cinematography which Nolan could have easily matched or surpassed, but he didn't. The BBC's three-part movie "Dunkirk" (2004) starring Benedict Cumberbatch re-creates the atmosphere in the read-guard action to reach/defend the beaches and the evacuation through personal stories in a more eloquent manner. The execution of the British prisoners by the SS and Cumberbatch's staunch defence are barely matched in Nolan's movie which, in my opinion, is too dependent on dialogue than action, especially sound. The beaches were indeed very noisy, not as in Nolan's film.
And the 1958 "Dunkirk" already provides a good depiction of the role of the small civilian boats in the evacuation which this movies does not build onto.
What a waste of an opportunity but one of the best contemporary movie directors.