One of Nolan's greatest achievements

Rating: 9/10 (29 May 2019)

At this point in the century there is no question in anyone's minds that Christopher Nolan has proven himself to be one of the very best directors of his generation after directing great films like "Insomnia", "The Dark Knight" trilogy, "Inception" and "Interstellar", "Dunkirk" is a worthy addition to that already masterful resume. The movie is a departure for Nolan because with this movie he treaded into unmarked territory and proved he could direct a masterful WWII movie up there with "Saving Private Ryan", "The Longest Day", "Patton", and others as well as the best ever made but this movie tells the story of a key British event in that particular war. The film is based on the true story of how the German military surrounded the British, French, and Belgian militaries to the point where they had to be evacuated which amounted to a total of 400,000 people on the beaches in Dunkirk, even though people like me who are fascinated by history already knew how it unfolded somewhat Nolan and his frequent composer Hans Zimmer build up the tension and suspense quite nicely. The cast is filled with mostly unknown actors to show how young and inexperienced the soldiers were, but like any Nolan film it doesn't come without its big stars. Tom Hardy plays a British fighter pilot where most of his scenes are in a plane fighting the enemy, Kenneth Branagh plays a British Naval Commander who oversees the evacuations, recent Oscar winner Mark Rylance (who played the Russian spy Rudolf Abel in Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies" a few years back) plays one of the civilians who helps in the evacuation process in getting all of the soldiers to safety, as well as frequent Nolan cohort Cillian Murphy who has a minor role a British soldier who is afraid of going back to battle because he fears for his life. Overall the movie is near perfect but the one problem I had was that the city of Dunkirk didn't even look like a war zone, and there wasn't enough extras to make it seem like there was 400,000 people on the beach, which are only extremely minor problems. The movie is one of the very best military movies that I've seen in a long time and of the very best of 2017.