Review of Dunkirk (2017) by Htgamer — 25 Aug 2017

Dunkirk is a great war movie, possibly one of the best ever made, and it actually shows respect for the victims of the war, the nameless soldiers, with no Rambo-style shenanigans.

The movie is about the evacuation of more than 300,000 English soldiers who got trapped at Dunkirk during the early stages of World War 2, and shows how the UK managed to save most of the stranded men through enlisting the help of many civilian boats rather than large warships (which got routinely bombed and sunk by the enemy, anyway). Despite the final outcome being well known, the movie builds suspense through great cinematography, editing and music, and never becomes boring.

The story is presented in a non linear way through three interweaving perspectives, in the air, land and sea. There are a few characters who get more screentime than others but there is no main protagonist, and little dialogue, because the movie isn't about an individual hero. It's about the thousands of men who are anxious to escape from Dunkirk alive while waiting for help from their country.

It's obvious that characters can't develop meaningfully in such a movie and it surprises me that critics complain about this, because, who cares if Tommy has a girlfriend back home? There is no place for personal stories in the fields of battle, all that matters during enemy bombings and air raids is to survive. One curious choice is that the movie constantly avoids to explicitly name the Nazis or even just the Germans, referring to them as "the enemy" instead. Nazi soldiers don't even show up on camera, rather they are heard shooting or just hinted at, maybe because the director wanted to emphasize the anxiety of soldiers to escape from the enemy, any enemy, not just the Nazis. I also liked the inclusion of Winston Churchill's famous "we shall fight... we shall never surrender" speach in the newspaper in the end, read by one of the evacuated soldiers.

All in all, Dunkirk is another great Christopher Nolan movie.