Gripping or silly !! I can't decide

Rating: 6/10 (26 July 2017)

I cannot make up my mind on this one. I loved the complexity of the three time strands. I liked the pacing and the use of music to create the threatening atmosphere.
In principle the idea is neat - there are so many men on the beach that giving a few of them a starring role and back story serves to understate the sheer mass of human suffering and terror being experienced during Dunkirk by everyone there, so the ensemble cast idea is a good one.
In reality though everyone has a back story and the film tradition of picking one or two of those out and providing more rounded characters works well in those circumstances because the audience can empathise, as it is, here we have an ensemble caste with a couple of not very well picked out individual characters that is hard to care too much about.
The film is a kind of half way house - a bit of a war movie, with a few superheros. You can tell it is made by someone more used to the fantasy figure genre. The characters that have been picked out behaving like comic book heroes in terms of the scrapes they get into and how they get out of them, with true Hollywood cliff hanging moments.
The movie is also curiously "unviolent" as it made for audience under 12. the beach scenes severely understate the brutality of the situation and the horror of war. The explosions were rather anodyne - Bodies being blown up on beaches but no discernible injuries afterwards.
I also thought the scenes on the beach looked rather sparse - for what was supposed to be 300,000 men.
Showing this from the perspective of the men on the beach without actually seeing the enemy works well but the actual terror of being on the beach does not come across that well especially when the beaches are both so empty and so orderly.
The ending is weak and very "Hollywood " unrealistic and happens abruptly - almost as if the money ran out
There are a few " laugh out loud " moments from a British sceptic - where someone gets saved at the final moment - true typical Hollywood super hero stuff - not really fitting for a war movie - where such moments probably didn't happen- people just died.
The story ark in the boat probably works best, but that is because it reverts to the tradition of finding characters one can empathise with, though even here rather too comic book for my tastes.
Overall I enjoyed the movie and I found it absorbing, but I don't think its a war masterpiece.