Dunkirk is a 2017 film directed by Christopher Nolan which stars Fion Whitehead, Harry Styles, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Glynn-Carney, and Barry Keoghan. The film is based on a true story and it is about a total of 400,000 allied soldiers of the British Empire and France trapped and surrounded by the German army. They are to trying to survive and hoping they can get out of this crisis but the odds are highly against them. Many attempt to come to their aid and try to evacuate as many as they can while the German Army is attacking.
General Thoughts:
Personally, I really enjoyed this movie. I’ve seen this film in RPX in theaters and this was my very first RPX viewing. Movie looked amazing in RPX but I think I enjoyed the movie more when I watched my bluray copy of the film at home. When I first saw the teaser of this film, I was really hyped. This movie was one of my anticipated films of 2017. Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite directors of all time and all the films I’ve seen so far that he made are really good. This is not my favorite Christopher Nolan movie but it’s still one of his best movies in my opinion. War movies are one of my favorites and it was great to see Nolan direct his first war movie. I still have yet to see a lot of war movies that gets praised a lot. It’s mind blowing in my opinion to see that this movie is based on a true story. It’s hard to imagine what the allied soldiers in real life felt mentally in the situation they were in. But we can all agree that it’s great that most of the allied soldiers were miraculously evacuated during the time of chaos back in 1940.
The Positives:
Dunkirk is a visually stunning movie. As I said above, I’ve seen this in RPX and it was a memorable experience. The movie’s setting was top notch and the sound effects were phenomenal. The sound effects of the rifle shots,etc makes it feel like you are actually at Dunkirk with the allied soldiers. That’s one of the great things I like about war movies. The sound effects of war films makes it feel like you are with the characters in the battle and/or you might feel what the character(s) are going through. I like how this movie is shown in three perspectives, and that is the land, the air and the sea. The cinematography of this film was phenomenal when it came to show these three perspectives. The film did a great job to show at the right moment of which perspective you need to see. You see each perspective back and forth. The movie was really intense from beginning to finish which was so unique because usually the middle act of films is where the intensity occurs. Hans Zimmer did the musical score for this film and the score makes the movie bring a lot of emotions. As you may know, Hans Zimmer worked with Christopher Nolan plenty of times, so all of his scores for Nolan’s films’ are great.
The Negatives:
Even though Dunkirk is a visually stunning movie, one of the things it really lacks is character development. But for a film like this, it is debatable if character development is needed or not because it is more about the situation and how the allied soldiers survived miraculously. Personally, I think there could’ve been room for some character development and the film would’ve been longer. The film’s run time is 1 hour and 46 minutes, so if we knew more about the characters, etc., then the film would’ve easily been more than 2 hours long. One of the things that makes movies awesome is the memorable dialogue/quotes. But Dunkirk lacks any notable dialogue/quote and that’s really overwhelming in my opinion. Even if there wasn’t any character development, a character can still say something amazing that can possibly impact the movie and be memorable but Dunkirk does not have that unfortunately.
The Verdict:
While Dunkirk does have its pros and cons, it’s still an enjoyable movie nonetheless. If you can still enjoy the movie like I did with only the visuals, musical score, intensity, and the story in general, then you’re good to go. But if you are looking for more things like memorable one liners and/or character development, then you might be disappointed. It’s still a really good movie in my opinion and I’m going to rate the movie four out of five stars. Stay tuned for another review!
The Elite Film Prodigy 