Review of Dunkirk (2017) by Gene T — 16 Aug 2018

This movie fails on every front except perhaps cinematography. There are no compelling characters for the audience to latch onto. What semblance of characters we do get are so generic and the acting so flat that they do not evoke any emotional response.

Now this issue could have been partly countered by truly bringing to life the event itself but the film fails on that front as well. Nolan never captures the scale of the invasion or any real feeling of impending doom the troops must have felt standing on that beach.

Part of this may be explained through an almost complete lack of casualties in the film. Now I'm not saying every film has to have guts and entrails flying everywhere but it does need a something in the way of a visual representation of the horror of war to connect with the audience on a visceral level and I feel this movie was just to PG13 to accomplish that.

The movie even fails as a true story or dramatised documentary as it simply isn't historically accurate as a whole.