Review of Dunkirk (2017) by Greg B — 28 Jul 2017

As someone who loves learning about history I found this to be a bit of a disappointment. Visually, it was stunning. The sound was also incredibly immersive. What left me flat were some very bizarre storytelling and editing ideas.

Splitting the story between three different events is well and fine, but not telling the story in chronological order seemed to me to be more of a cop out and excuse to not spend the time needed to develop the characters and more importantly really tell/show the audience the events as they occurred.

Major and important things were left out. Brushing upon the French contribution is downright insulting to the many brave French soldiers who fought and essentially stalled the Germans (I'm sorry, the "enemy.

") long enough for the British to escape. Also, never showing the Germans (the enemy) means the audience doesn't need to know that had Hitler not made the amazingly stupid decision to not pursue the British they may not have escaped to begin with.

As much as I admire Chris Nolan for deciding to tell the events of Dunkirk in less than 2 hours, for a roughly 10 day mass evacuation that is considered the greatest military retreat by many historians, I think he could have added at least another thirty minutes to the run time.