So Much Missed Opportunity - Another Movie Is Needed!!

Rating: 6/10 (23 July 2017)

Went and saw Dunkirk last night. If you plan on seeing it, STOP reading - my short review will likely spoil it.
Not a typical war movie, not at all actually. Was feeling like the Director missed a great opportunity to tell more about the amazing history. There was a lot of great filming, but the three stories within the overall story with how they switched back and forth was so complicated, it was hard to keep up on what was going on. It did make you feel like you were IN the scenes though - which was the best part of the movie. The biggest flaw as so many others have stated - very little character development that resulted in my not having much empathy on a personal level. As another reviewer put it, there was no difference in the sense of loss between a main character getting killed any of the extra's getting killed. Nothing at all like the character development that occurred in Saving Private Ryan and other great war films. The second flaw (also mentioned numerous times by others), the background music was non-stop and got to be quite noticeable and annoying.
I got bored and started looking at my watch about 3/4 of the way wondering when it was going to end. Overall, a disappointment - won't ever watch it again.
I hope someday another Director will take another shot at focusing more on how the miracle happened at Dunkirk, both from the Allied's and Germany's perspective (like how they did in The Longest Day, Patton and Tora Tora Tora). Seeing exactly HOW so many of the small boats got organized for the rescue would have been good. Watching some scenes of German commanders making decisions to not go in for the kill would have been also good. And then seeing their eventual surprise when they realized that they let 300,000 troops escape through their fingers - would had made an excellent scene. And then finally, a voice recording of Churchill's inspiring speech at the end, rather than mere words on the screen would have been much better and satisfying.
The biggest mystery to me is why this movie is being rated so high. Guess the difference in style is what is being praised mostly? As of this writing, the IMDb rating is at 8.7 - way too high of a score, needs to be down in the 6-7 range.