Doesn't Live up to Hype

Rating: 4/10 (8 January 2018)

It's not that Dunkirk is a bad movie - it's just not anywhere near as good as just about everyone made it out to be.
First of all, the actual event involved the evacuation of 400,000 troops and hundreds of small boats. The movie does not capture the grand scale and immensity of Dunkirk at all. With modern film making techniques it couldn't have been that difficult to make the evacuation look like the huge event it actually was.
Also, the aerial combat scenes were laughable. An airplane here, an airplane there. Lone bomber sinks just about every ship it attacks. One Spitfire runs out of fuel but the pilot glides around for what feels like 15 minutes and even manages to shoot down a Stuka before landing, wheels down on the beach to be captured. Pretty laughable.
The acting was okay but none of the roles were particularly challenging. Maybe a lot of the hype was generated by the presence of Harry Stiles of One Direction in the cast. He's no DeNiro and the role didn't need him to be one.
The scenes of ships being sunk were pretty harrowing though but they aren't really enough to make this movie into more of an event than it really is.