Looks like a war epic on a budget

Rating: 6/10 (31 August 2017)

OK, a couple of pointers. If you can't stand films with basically no dialogue, give this one a miss. The story is told basically in a documentary style and for the first 10 minutes there is no real dialog. It does look like the story of a wet weekend in Margate where the territorial army was on a drill. This was supposed to be a massive evacuation of men. There were men everywhere. Even although this is shot in very nice wide format, it fails to convey the shear human scale of the evacuation. One of the other intersecting stories is supposed to be the RAF out on patrol giving cover to the troops on the beach. Unfortunately I think there are actually only 3 spitfires still flying in the world. And It looks like they are in this film. So unfortunately it just looks like the might of the RAF was 3 spitfires that were just on patrol. I think the director tries to make us believe that there were more, like a squadron of them, but it just looks like the same 3 planes. So when they are having a dog fight, unfortunately that's all you are thinking 'didn't that plane just get shot down? I'm sure that's the same plane, why is it still flying..' The rest of it is alright, there are some good scenes and then there are some where you are just scratching your head. The 1958 version with old Sir John 'rugged face' Mills and dikkie Attenbourough is much better, and gives a much better account of the scale of the amount of men trapped on the beach. But then again that was shot just after the war and they had plenty of old tanks, boats and aircraft to blow up.