Polished, but unfortunately it's also uncinematic and unengaging

Rating: 4/10 (9 June 2018)

Dunkirk is Christopher Nolan's attempt to tell the story of the evacuation of thousands of soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk. Whilst, this film clearly worked for a lot of people (critics and IMDB members alike) I'm afraid that personally I didn't feel much love for it I'm afraid...
To begin with the positives the film looks incredibly good and as director Nolan throws us into the horrors of war fairly well - one could argue that he is perhaps too much in love with the technical side of things, but the jury is out on that one for the time being ; despite this he does give the film a sense of hopelessness and fear which does just about enough to drive the film along...
However, the film, for me, fails in pretty much every other area; for a start, it shunts about all over the place shifting focus here, there and everywhere, and whilst I get that Nolan was doing this to try to show the evacuation from varying perspectives he doesn't really give any focus on one given area which caused a bit of a problem. You can't fault the actors here and I think it's fair to say that everyone does 'their bit' but when you look at the talented ensemble here it's hard not to be a little disappointed by the wasted potential here; the likes of Murphy, Hardy, Branagh and Rylance are all here, but they make so little impact that it becomes barely worthy of mention. The narrative is so thin that it's barely worthy of mention - there is a hint of discussion about the evacuation, but it's so slight that almost seems insignificant.
Unfortunately, these things ultimately work against the film and rather than cheering everyone on I found myself rather indifferent to everything that happened - most of the characters feel inconsequential and the lack of me being able to care for anyone or anything here unfortunately held me back from being able to enjoy the film (and believe me it pains me to say this given the vast number of lives that were lost at Dunkirk during World War 2). However, when watching films of this nature, I do need to feel uplifted and at least have a sense of euphoria at the end, but I didn't feel this way at any point whist watching Dunkirk. In truth, it is episodic, repetitive and a bit boring.
In summary, the best analogy I can use is that Nolan had everything going for him here, but much like Beckham's penalty against Turkey he missed the goal by a long way...