Dunkirk is an Intense and Memorable War Movie About Courage Against Insurmountable Odds

Rating: 8/10 (3 August 2017)

*Minor Spoilers Ahead* I would normally do a plot summary but the movie Dunkirk is so focused on telling the story of this escape in a unique way that even giving you anything but the bare bones information feels like giving away too much. If you know your history, the evacuation of Dunkirk took place over approximately a week from May 27, 1940- June 4, 1940 where Allied troops (predominately British and French) were forced out onto the beaches of Dunkirk by the German army. With so many soldiers in one place and with the Allies lacking clear evacuation plan, it made them easy targets for the German air force and navy. The lives of over 300,000 soldiers hung in the balance. This movie primarily centres around soldier Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), mariner Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) and pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy) and their heroic efforts in this conflict.
A lot of Dunkirk will take your breath away. The best parts of Dunkirk are white-knuckle tense and I found myself breathing heavier and trying to turn away from the screen. The movie envelops you and puts you right in these soldiers' inevitable doom. This movie wants to place you in the middle of the action and they accomplish that on every level. There are scenes of soldiers drowning or being burned alive that are just gut-wrenching. I've seen some war movies feature similar scenes but I think that Dunkirk might have performed them best.
There is so much in Dunkirk to be appreciated and Christopher Nolan's commitment to practical effects and filming things in a unique and interesting way are chief among them. The action here is mind-blowing but it feels grounded and that makes it more effective. Nolan could have rested on his laurels and just turned anything out but it feels like he took this story to heart and was committed to bring an understanding to the world of how important this event was in British military history.
Dunkirk takes a surprising turn in that there aren't a lot of big name actors despite it being a Christopher Nolan project. That isn't to say the acting is lacklustre, the cast does their job admirably. Instead of relying on the material, they have to let you know through their body language and their expressions. Tom Hardy is his normal excellent self, he can convey more with just his eyes than some actors can in their whole bodies. Mark Rylance also does good work, he's good at being reserved yet he can really get you to feel. Kenneth Branagh also fares well, he's a veteran and he does his job capably. Fionn Whitehead is excellent for a relative newcomer. There are many more actors and I didn't find a weak performance among the cast.
I do have some small complaints about the movie. The first is that even though the movie does detail the timelines of the main characters, things can become confusing when the stories interweave with each other. Second, it can be hard to distinguish who lives and who dies because you don't have any personal knowledge about who each actor is playing. The characters blend together at times and there were a couple of emotional deaths that I couldn't figure out who didn't make it until I could determine it from a process of elimination. My biggest complaint is that the beginning and the end of the movie drag a little bit. I feel like that even though this is a fairly short movie, they pad certain things out or the movie falls in love with its cinematography (which as mentioned above is phenomenal) and forgets to tighten things up. I also found the score a little overbearing early in the movie but that concern faded away as the sound editing and the haunting musical choices are excellent at producing horror and nail-biting suspense are great on the whole.
If you think about high points and low points, Dunkirk's highs place it an elite category of war movie. The look, the action and the fascinating story can stack up against the best of the best. My low points weren't wrecking the movie for me but it did take me out of it here and there. I'm so glad I got to see Dunkirk on the big screen though, even if I was a couple of weeks late. It's a movie to be seen in the nicest theatre you have around to fully appreciate it. I applaud Christopher Nolan for taking on this story and even though this isn't my favourite movie of the year or even my favourite war movie, it is a valuable piece of cinema in its own right. If you can, I definitely recommend you check it out on the big screen if you can.