Narrow-minded critics are not giving this movie its justice

Rating: 10/10 (8 January 2018)

Of all my years watching film, I've never been this urged to decide creating an account just to elaborate on why this film is a masterpiece, rather than the "flub" that so many of its critics so ignorantly clamor.
The main criticism the movie gets is that "it has characters that I don't know much about."
Here is why this criticism is flawed and shortsighted: this comes from a conditioned outlook that war movies are to be like Saving Private Ryan and pretty much every other war movie before and after that.
DUNKIRK IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THE REST OF THOSE WAR MOVIES.
The conventional war movie has the characters as its base, and the actual war as the backdrop, the complimentary setting and background that the characters shine in.
Nolan did not go this direction, which is why its praises involve the word "ambitious."
For Dunkirk, it's the SETTING ITSELF, THE WAR, as the main base, with the characters acting as the complimentary background for the experience of war to shine off of.
Nolan created a film such that it maximizes us as viewers to FEEL what the events of Dunkirk were like.
This is why the faulty criticism of "the lack of character depth" is a silly notion and one that encompasses the definition of simple-minded. To truly be in Dunkirk, in or in about any war on any battlefield that has progressed to a point similar to the events portrayed in the film, the person next to you or the people around you are nothing more than a schmuck who technically signed up for this tragedy but technically never asked for this, either.
There is no Hollywood-fantasy-like moment where you get to know how much the guy to your left has smashed, or if the guy in front of you has ever lost their two front teeth.
Extreme character exposition is not needed in this film for Nolan's direction and ambition to work. But because people don't understand this, because people are judging this work in the wrong perspective, it gets its severely underrated 8.1 rating instead.
The tension, the thrill, the suspense of each and every scene is masterfully done because (and this is coming straight from Nolan's mouth) this is less of a typical war movie and more of a suspense/thriller. Zimmer's amazing music elevates the anxious, claustrophobic aura of the film to unbelievable heights. The soldiers well-grounded to reality and the realistic heroism very appreciative by Hardy's great acting.
So if you are someone who has yet to see this brilliant movie, ignore the unimaginative critics, and go into the movie knowing full well not to expect Saving Private Ryan. Rather, to expect being as close as you can spiritually be to the scary events that occurred in Dunkirk.