"Dunkirk" is an innovative, well-crafted, engrossing and enjoyable film.

Rating: 8/10 (23 July 2017)

The World War II battle and evacuation portrayed in director Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" (PG-13, 1:46) involved no American troops, but had a big impact on the U.S. role – a full year and a half before it (officially) joined the fight. As the Nazi blitzkrieg swept through France, Belgium and the Netherlands in May of 1940, the armies of those countries, and their ally Great Britain, were pushed westward until they were trapped in the area around Dunkirk, France (near the Belgian border), with nowhere to go but into the English Channel. Nearly 400,000 of them.
Nolan's trademark creativity led him to write and direct this film as a triptych, telling three related stories which took different periods of time to unfold, but showing them running concurrently throughout the film. A slate on the screen introduces each narrative (and the amount of time that it represents) from the first shot of each: "1. The Mole | One Week" (a mole being a pier-like, but solid breakwater built out from the beach); "2. The Sea | One Day"; "3. The Air | One Hour". Once each of those printed designations fades from the screen, the movie moves back and forth between stories.
On the beach, close to 400,000 men awaited their fate, whether it be rescue or annihilation. The German Army (which is barely shown and referred to only as "the enemy") has the British, French, Belgian and Dutch troops surrounded on three sides, with the channel blocking their escape on the fourth. The Germans seem content, at least for the moment, to keep the troops bottled up on the beach and pick them off from the air with strafing missions and bomb the ships and boats attempting rescue. Among those struggling to survive on the beach are Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), a British soldier who barely escapes unseen German rifles to make it to the mole, Gibson (Aneurin Barnard), a mysterious soldier with whom Tommy teams up and Alex (Harry Styles), another soldier whom they end up saving from a sinking ship and with whom they explore various opportunities to save themselves. When one of their plans goes awry, they end up overhearing a conversation in which a British naval commander (a composite character played by Kenneth Branagh) discusses with other officers how dire the situation is.
On the sea, the British ships aren't up to the task of a rescue operation under these conditions. The Admiralty is unwilling to send over more than one large ship at a time for fear of losing ships that may be desperately needed for a last-ditch defense of the British Isles against an expected German invasion. Many of the smaller ships and boats that do arrive to assist with the rescue find themselves unable to navigate the shallow waters at Dunkirk, and only a few of them can even get close enough to load men who have walked out onto the mole. The attempted solution is for British naval officers on the English side of the channel to commandeer just about anything that floats to make the crossing to either bring soldiers back or ferry them from the shore out to the larger ships. Some boat owners take up the challenge personally out of a sense of duty and compassion. One of those is a mariner named Dawson (Oscar winner Mark Rylance), who brings along his teenage son (Tom Glynn-Carney) and his son's friend, George (Barry Keoghan). Their first encounter with someone who needs rescuing is a downed pilot (Cillian Murphy) who is on the verge of an emotional breakdown and becomes a danger to the mission.
In the air, a squadron of three RAF pilots (including Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden) patrol the skies for Luftwaffe planes and, when they find them, try to shoot them down to keep them from shooting the soldiers on the beach or bombing the ships and boats trying to rescue them. They doggedly and heroically pursue their mission, in spite of the unpredictability and danger of the Luftwaffe planes, very limited (dwindling) fuel supplies and the loss of comrades. As this and the other two narratives develop, the movie interweaves all three stories and brings each to logical, but fairly unpredictable conclusions.
"Dunkirk" is an innovative, well-crafted and enjoyable film. Nolan (best known for his "Dark Knight" trilogy, "Inception" and "Interstellar") effectively joins his three differently-paced narratives (although the back-and-forth between day and night in the beach scenes can be a little disorienting). His script contains a relatively small amount of dialog, instead building suspense by concentrating on the details of what's happening and showing all of it through the eyes of his actors. He chose to cast (mostly) unknown actors in order to focus on the characters' personal stories and he conducted an exhaustive casting process to make sure his approach would bear fruit. (And it did, even with the casting of One Direction singer Harry Styles in his first film role.) Nolan also shot using creative and evocative camera angles, he favored practical effects (rather than an overuse of green-screen technology) for his crowd scenes and action sequences and put a lot of effort into shooting with authentic period planes, ships and boats, some of which participated in the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. Oh, and Hans Zimmer's original score (complete with a synthesized version of Nolan's own pocket watch ticking away the time) stands out. In short, Christopher Nolan has dramatized a vital, but under-appreciated chapter of World War II history in a style that is all his own and has made a film that should appeal to Movie Fans of all styles. The little that it lacks in excitement, back story and narrative cohesion as compared to more traditional war films, it mostly makes up for in artistic and entertainment value. "A-"