In 1940, British and French soldiers are trapped against the English Channel by the German army after a set of military disasters at the beginning of World War II. In a desperate tactic, the English, using mainly civilian boats and crews, were able to evacuate more than 300,000 soldiers to live and fight another day. If you are thinking that this doesn’t sound like an exciting event, think again!! This movie really brings this story alive with a mixture of historic detail and great story telling. Kudos to Christopher Nolan. The movie is told from three different perspectives: a British private desperately trying to get home, an RAF pilot flying a Spitfire and an average man who helms his commandeered boat to rescue as many of the boys as he can. Mark Rylance plays the civilian ship owner who shows the calm determination of the men who sailed the “cockle shell” fleet to the war torn Dunkirk beaches. His reasons become clear as the movie progresses. It is no fluke he won an Academy Award for “Bridge of Spies.” This man has quite the acting chops! Tom Hardy portrays a Spitfire pilot with a quiet fortitude as he battles against German fighters and a bomber over the Channel. There is not a lot of dialog here, Nolan lets the action tell the story and oh what a story it is! The reactions shown by the rescued soldiers and the British people that meet them sum up the story, with a final summation provided by one of the men reading parts of Winston Churchill’s famous address about fighting on as the Battle of Britain looms. This is Nolan’s first historical movie and I hope it won’t be his last. We saw the 70mm film version and let me tell you, several times I thought I was watching 3D because of the way the film puts you in the middle of the action. All in all, this was a thrilling and emotional ride that will leave you wanting to run to the nearest bookstore (or on-line website) to research more about this great unsung (in movies) event from World War II.
Dunkirk
Apple Rating:
I just saw this last night. While I thought it was a well crafted and thrilling ride, it was a bit too relentless and I didn’t really care about any of the characters. There’s something to be said about the quiet moments of a movie where you get to know the characters…this didn’t really have that. So that made the tense scenes a little less tense because I didn’t really care if anyone died (not in a callous way, but in a character development way). I think it could have been 30-minutes longer in order to put some more meat onto the story of the characters (like other great war movies do). The break in the action would have also given the intense scenes more gravity and shock when they happened.
That is a very interesting view point. I did feel for the characters, especially the poor guys who were just trying to get on a boat to get home. But it is true, now that you mention it, that we do not learn a lot about the motivations or background for most characters. We learn a few little tidbits, like Mark Rylance’s character had lost a son in the early days of the war. On the other hand, who was that French soldier? Did he desert? Did he kill the soldier he was stealing the uniform from? I will say that even without more in depth character development; I enjoyed this movie and will probably see it again.