A Spectacle in Search of a Story

Rating: 2/10 (24 July 2017)

The most remarkable about Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk is that he entirely missed the whole story of Dunkirk which was about these tiny private boats, thousands of them, piloted by citizen-sailors rescuing hundreds of thousands of cornered British troops. This became a huge rallying point for the Brits before the Blitz when ordinary Britons actually saved 270,000 men. For most of Nolan's Dunkirk he focuses on Mark Rylance who appears to be out in the middle of the English Channel all by himself. In reality, the private fleet was a massive flotilla. If you live on the west coast of the US, imagine every private boat in LA Harbor, Long Beach and Newport emptied into the Catalina Channel. That's what Dunkirk was like. Where are all those CG effects when you really need them? Instead, Nolan seems more interested in effects that show troop transport ships being torpedoed and breached which is NOT the real story of Dunkirk. And that's not saying anything about Cillan Murphy's pointless flashbacks or Tom Hardy's silly Hollywood RAF pilot who shoots down German fighters without fuel or an engine. If you judge a film by the actual events that inspired it this is not inspired work - just another bloated CG spectacle with an over-mixed soundtrack, a much advertised 70mm picture, and in selected theaters, vibrating seats. Seriously. In that sense, Dunkirk is not a bad IMAX film - if only it were an hour shorter. If you want to see a good Dunkirk film, dig up the Dunkirk from 1958 with John Mills. A far superior piece of cinema.