Dunkirk - simply brilliant ! Nolan does it again ! genius ! Heart pumping stuff from start to finish.

Rating: 10/10 (22 July 2017)

What I like about Christopher Nolan is he doesn't insult the audience's intelligence , The timeline and focus of Dunkirk is split into 3 points of view ; LAND, AIR and SEA and although it needs your attention the non linear flashbacks and forwards to each POV are a complex intertwining way of showing the story from those 3 perspectives, some might prefer a chronological order but I think that would lose the 3 element POV. On LAND we follow a small band of soldiers for the longest time period and their attempts to get back to England amongst the hundreds of thousands of men waiting to be rescued from the Dunkirk beaches. On the SEA we focus on one day and one of the small boats that ventures out from a small harbour to get across the dangerous waters of the English channel. In the AIR we have the perspective of a couple of Spitfire pilots where their timeline lasting one hour or more accurately until their mission fuel lasts. This really is an epic 'event' film, the way this historic event is portrayed is second to none, there's a real sense of drama and desperation about the how the soldiers try to get back home to just survive on the beach and on the limited ships trying their best to evacuate them. The spitfire pilots are on the clock, they can only stay in the air for as long as their fuel allows and you feel that clock ticking away with every scene from the sky. Of the flotilla at sea we only see one out of the hundreds of boats involved in this momentous rescue mission, but again this isn't about too much character development, it's there to show us a snippet in the lives of ordinary people coming to the aid of a national disaster not ignoring the obvious danger but accepting it needs to be done. The individual character / actor performances are never too big to overshadow the event as a whole. Tom Hardy is fantastic as one of the 2 spitfire pilots that we see and is very much on the job in hand in an almost routine way, he is not trying to be a hero he is just doing the best he can. Newcomers Fionn Whitehead and even Harry Stiles show they have plenty of acting talent and deserve to be alongside some great veteran actors like Kenneth Brannagh, Mark Rylance and Cillian Murphy, who all put in great performances. Come Oscar / awards season I would expect a few best supporting actor nominations. Another aspect of the film I really like is the lack of dialogue, especially at the start of the film , this really allows for the scene to be set and triggers our pulses racing. Hans Zimmer as ever provides a truly atmospheric and great score that adds immensely to the mounting tension that we experience throughout the film. Nolan never disappoints me with spectacular visuals and here again we see some large scale scenes that are of the best ever war film cinematography I can think of. There is plenty of action mixed in with moments of tranquillity, the calm before the storm the harrowing fight for survival in the face of adversity. As I left the theatre I couldn't help but overhear peoples comments of 'wow, what a great and powerful film' I couldn't agree more ! such a must see film, I will be going to see it again next week on the iMax screen, I already rank this as my top film of the year with another viewing I can easily imagine this becoming my favourite film of the 21st century so far.