Interesting approach but hard to sit through

Rating: 6/10 (23 August 2017)

Dunkirk was a disappointment and is easily Christopher Nolan's weakest movie to date. There were many issues I had with that movie: confusing overlapping story lines, exchangeable characters without any depth, mostly faceless acting performances, a constantly numbing, overtly dramatic and repetitive soundtrack and lots of headache-inducing shaky camera passages, even in parts of the movie when nobody is getting attacked. Those who call this movie one of the greatest war movies of all times clearly haven't watched many films of that kind. Over the past twenty years, films such as Saving Private Ryan, The Pianist, Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War, My Way and Battle for Incheon: Operation Chromite all had intriguing characters, gripping tension, memorable scenes, moving soundtracks and spectacular special effects. Before you voice your opinion about Dunkirk or any of its reviews, you should be familiar with movies like these.
However, there were still a few elements that I liked about Dunkirk that made the movie entertaining and overall slightly above average. First of all, the storytelling is an interesting experiment, as it follows the Dunkirk evacuation from three perspectives: land, sea and air. The land perspective is the most gripping one and follows the epic odyssey of a young British Private. The sea perspective has its strengths when a tragic accident happens on the boat of a courageous civilian who wants to support the Royal Navy but the characters could have been a little bit more fleshed out. The air perspective is the weakest one in my book despite an epic finale because the fight sequences always exactly look the same and it's at times hard to follow what happened to whose plane. A strong element of the movie is its historic accuracy despite a few fictionalized characters here and there. The settings look authentic and especially the uniforms and planes look realistic. It must also be added that stories about the war shall not be forgotten as history tends to repeat itself and as it's important to honour those who fought for the freedom of the future generations.
In the end, Dunkirk has its merits and doesn't go the easy way with heroic characters, stunning special effects and traditional plots. However, the numerous overlapping plots are at times confusing, the characters are mostly redundant and the omnipresent score doesn't add to the movie as it was intended by the makers. If you are interested in the Second World War and have watched numerous war movies already, you might be interested in giving Dunkirk a shot as well. However, if you are less familiar with war movies, you might easily get bored with this film and should watch the movies I have mentioned in my introduction first.