Dunkirk - Review Thread

If there isn't a scene where a guy shows a picture of his girl to someone else followed by that person immediately getting killed, I'm not interested.

I'd also like to see a British black soldier suffer some prejudice from the white British soldiers only to have them all come together at the end and overcome the obstacles together.

You laugh, but I've seen people online complaining about the lack of diversity in the movie.

Enjoyed it a lot. Didn't love it as much as everyone else though, not my favorite Nolan movie, not something I'll probably seek out in the future.

Should sweep the sound awards for sure.

7/10

There are few filmmakers in the world that receive as much attention as Christopher Nolan does when they release a new film, and for good reason. Nolan has cemented himself as the premiere, big budget director of the last two decades coming out with a slew of critically acclaimed and financially successful spectacles. He seems to be a target that people like to pick on, for reasons I don't understand. Nolan has continued to show that spectacle filmmaking works at its core if the screenplay and deft direction accompanies the big budget ideas, whether it's following Batman or traversing through space or pursuing a serial killer. I won't go as far to say that Nolan is on the level of Kubrick in regards to his ability to leap seamlessly from genre to genre, but it's fair to say that his interests are diverse and we've received unique cinematic experiences from Nolan with each standalone film he's done. His latest film, Dunkirk, continues this trend. It's a World War II film taking place in one location, highlighting the miraculous survival (albeit no miraculous victory) of French and British troops on the beach of Dunkirk. Though I can understand why some would be a bit frustrated with Nolan's latest work, I found it to be an incredible spectacle of filmmaking that eschews the traditional storytelling we see in most war films for technical prowess in order to invoke the feelings of tension and despair that war carries.

One of the most strikingly unique elements of Dunkirk is that it does not follow a linear storytelling pattern, which is something war films generally follow precisely. Instead of starting with the rise of the conflict and carrying on through the end of it, Nolan separates the action into three different time periods. The main plot line centers around the week long struggle on the beach while we also observe the war through the British civilian efforts to provide rescue boats to the beach and finally the pilots in their one hour journey from England to Dunkirk to provide aerial assistance while the evacuation process slowly unfolds. It can be a bit jarring at first, but once I realized what Nolan was doing I applauded this unique form of storytelling that you hardly see from a film of Dunkirk's magnitude. It's a choice that pays off in depicting the many sides of this historical event while also deviating from the standard A to B story archetypes that war films so often fall into. Nolan also distances himself from war films' traditional storytelling manners by spending hardly any time at all developing (at least in the standard sense) characters' backstories or having them spew expositional dialogue regarding their stances on war or how they got there. This is likely to frustrate viewers who want characters to latch onto while they face one perilous moment after another, but while I usually would scold a film for neglecting to provide exposition on these soldiers, I found it to be completely irrelevant to the film. Why should Nolan recycle the same cliched soldiers we've seen in every war movie, why should he provide them with the same monotonous exposition that's been overly done for years? The film moves at such a daringly frenetic pace that doing so would completely throw off its incredible momentum and would do so in order to explore the same redundancies we seen in almost every film about war, even the great ones. I still see it as a valid criticism, even for fans of Nolan who has constantly provided his viewers with several characters in each of his films that have a lot more to work with than any of the ones in Dunkirk, but for me I examined the film's tone and felt there was no reasonable advantage for him doing so. Nolan is challenging the combat film genre with these very stylistic choices, and even if they don't always work I applaud him for not just delivering us a typical war film.

As one would expect, the technical achievements in Dunkirk are mesmerizing. The sound editing is ferociously loud, the action is unrelenting and done mostly with highly impressive practical effects work, the cinematography is gorgeous, and some of the scenarios that Nolan has blocked out are absolutely thrilling. In a way Dunkirk reminded me a lot of Mad Max: Fury Road in that it was a film that was light on story and characters but was able to maintain a steady pounding of tension and suspense throughout its duration without ever growing tiresome. From the beautiful opening shot of flyers detailing the invasion falling from the sky all the way to the climactic action pieces, Nolan's films surges with such an energy. The enemy remains nearly faceless throughout the film (another interesting choice by Nolan) and relentlessly attacks the soldiers with bombers, torpedoes, and gunfire. The clock ticking in the background becomes as much of the landscape as the beach. We learn very little about these soldiers, but we feel their fear and despair as they somehow withstand one attack after another. Nolan unleashes all of this upon the viewer at a breakneck pace, and while it can be exhausting, I never felt like any of it became redundant. In the hands of an average filmmaker, Dunkirk would've fallen into a mindless spectacle of action, but Nolan is able to elevate the thin material into something much more. Even a scene in the beginning of the film where two soldiers are shuttling a wounded soldier on a stretcher as they try to get him onto a ship before it leaves is filled with an immense amount of dread. It's all a lot of fun, and Nolan is so adept in reminding the audience that cinema can generate terrific suspense without spoken words when leaning on some smart blocking and making even the smallest tasks feel like the most imperative ones.

While Nolan's stylized choices are what separates Dunkirk from other war films, there's no mistake to be made in thinking that Nolan isn't flexing his big budget muscles here to make it all work. The aerial dogfight scenes with Tom Hardy are the best to be put on film, the replica battleships add a stunning realism to these big set pieces, and the sweeping cinematography done often in long-take wides and silhouettes is very impressive. While I always argue that Nolan at his heart, and at his best, relies on the simple (relatively speaking) elements of filmmaking to impress the way he does, there's no denying that he greatly benefits from being able to lean on the best technology Hollywood has to offer, and he uses it very well. But Dunkirk, for all its spectacle and for all its reluctance to become another war film, is a highly experimental film, a risky venture for a picture so large and being helmed by a filmmaker known for his big budget storytelling. Do these stylized choices pay off? I certainly think so. Dunkirk isn't the greatest war film ever, nor does it thematically explore anything of unique proportions, but Nolan has been wildly successful in making a film that truly captures the feeling and angst of being in combat and wanting nothing more than to remove yourself from it. Dunkirk may not have characters to latch onto, but it more than makes up for that by redefining what a war film needs in order to be successful while also being the ultimate summer film in providing blissful suspense and sheer thrills. Once again, Christopher Nolan has created the blockbuster of the summer while furthering his own artistry and innovation as a filmmaker.

8/10

The hype will be gone in 6 months and it will be remembered as another War film that had interesting concept but execution was okay.

I'll read the real reviews at that time.

I'm just over the whole Nolan train. It's the same people who say "Intestellar" is the best scifi movie when it came out proclaiming better than 2001 A Space Odyssey and Star Wars.

Same with "The Dark Knight" as the best comic book at the time.

No. The movie was decent. It's not better war film then "Saving Private Ryan, Bridge on the River Kwai ect...

It's hard to just enjoy a film when the Nolanites act like it's a masterpiece top 10 greatest film of all time.

Like I said in my review. It was an okay movie

Inception is fucking great. Dunkirk not so much. Inception is high-concept, fun characters, great action scenes. Dunkirk is bland characters, boring action scenes and a story that didn't really need the "Nolan touch." SnoBorderZero brought up Mad Max. Difference is that Mad Max had a linear story that propelled the action and characters. Dunkirk jumping around made things confusing and emotionless. Take the Tom Hardy character for example. He has an hour to fly in and give the troops aerial support. He shouldn't have shown up till the end. There needs to be urgency and pressure coming through his character but it feels leisurely. That's how you can describe the movie. Take away the Hans Zimmer music, and trust me, you would have fallen asleep.

I think the "confusion" is almost by design, it puts you into the mindset of characters thrown into a chaotic situation, a bit like how the unconventional chronology of Memento puts you in that guy's mind.

Bullshit.

This isn't a story that needed confusion. It's an incredibly simple story. The British need to leave Dunkirk but lack the means to do so and so British civilians chip in. The BFG was the heart and soul of this fucking movie but is third banana to Shit Boy, One Direction, Mute Boy and Tom Hardy flying around and occasionally shooting something.

It really wasn't. It was an evacuation. The British had to pull their troops because the Nazi's were making their way to England. It was a simple task: get the fuck out of France and go defend home. The complication comes from the lack of ships. It wasn't confusion. It was desperation. Get on a boat. That's all they had to do. But boats weren't coming, and if they did, they were getting blown up.

It's a simple straightforward story. No need for Nolanization. The whole movie should have taken place in the hour it took for Tom Hardy to arrive. Intercut between the soldiers on the ground , the BFG on the boat and Tom Hardy in the air, all in real time. None of that one week, three day, one hour bullshit.