Disjointedly Disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (10 January 2019)

21 July 2017. Yes war is chaos, yet Dunkirk was disjointedly and chaotic for the wrong cinematic reasons. Perhaps in times of war, under stress, people do stupid and even idiotic things, but the script entailed focusing on some not so smart, unintelligent behavior that can leave particular audience members shaking their heads in bafflement instead of wondrous awe.
Sometimes its daylight, then nighttime, then daylight, then nighttime all in the seemingly same time frame. There's a scene when instead of posting a lookout, a small contingent of soldiers find themselves trapped in a darkened, confined space. The audience is offered up a less than sympathetic leading character, one soldier in particular who seems to escape death again and again whose actions appear less than honorable and whose connection with the audience seems distant and unattached. The aerial scenes are constantly interrupted with edits back to the other two story lines almost like a hyperactive attention deficit disorder so that the audience isn't able to vicariously experience the full impact of the emotional and mental turmoil of the pilot.
The audience gets to experience the lead character at the beginning of the movie wadding up flyers for a bowel movement behavior which are a little later strangely unused or at least unseen. There is a scene towards the end of the movie where an officer volunteers to remain behind seemingly safe for the moment while another is seemingly in jeopardy of being capture nearby. In between, there are random scenes of destruction and mayhem that almost appear to be inserted not for historical accuracy but to maintain some sort of pace fore the moving along with a musical track that hauntingly is oddly reminiscent of an occult horror movie Under the Skin (2013) with its eerie string tonal sounds. There are the typical almost dying and miracle being saved at the last moment taken straight out of mainstream action adventure movies when instead an armed soldier might have a least used a pistol to try to escape from the surging water. Additionally, there is a confrontation at sea between a rescued soldier and some civilian boatman which comes across awkward.
The movie is so fragmented that the emotional connection with the characters is lost and the storyline jumps so much that there isn't time or extended scenes to allow the audience to fully appreciate or understand the entirety of a scene before they are ripped away to experience some other part of the action. A disappointing movie by a great director. Dr. Zhivago (1965) is able to capture both the human connection and both the appeal and tragedy of war or Black Hawk Down (2001) another military rescue mission offers an more captivating and intimate as well as dirty and rawness of war.