Dunkirk

"Seeing home doesn't help us get there, Captain."

Filmology Rating: 3.17 out of 4

400,000 men stuck on the beaches of Dunkirk. Enemies surrounding them with no way to get home…. so home came for them.

Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite directors. He has given us some absolutely incredible films over the years like Inception, Interstellar, the Dark Knight trilogy, Memento, and so many others. Every new film he has, I always get really excited! Dunkirk was no exception and especially with initial reviews of it being the next Saving Private Ryan….. no it wasn’t. While Dunkirk is a brilliantly made movie, it isn’t itself fantastic. Dunkirk is good, nothing more.

I know I am in the minority when I say that I only think that Dunkirk was just good so I'm going to go over what was excellent very quickly so I can get to my points of what was lacking. The sound editing and mixing were absolutely incredible and paired with the war torn rugged look of everything, you are there on that beach getting bombed. The cinematography was top notch and the color schemes very minimal and only used when necessary. The acting all around was near perfection. This is just a small list of what was great. So CRITICALLY this movie is out of this world, however I have several big issues as previously stated to make me say that this film is only good.

This movie is not in chronological order and it really bothered me. No I don't have non-chronological movies because I really do like them. It just didn’t work well with this movie. One moment you would be in a high intensity situation with them on the beach and then it would cut to Tom Hardy being a badass in an airplane. It would jump from daytime to nighttime. We would be drowning and gasping for air and then I'm on a boat with the citizens on their way to rescue the men at Dunkirk. See a little pattern? You go from a very high intensity situation and then cut away to something else and skip forward or backward in time. This FOR ME lost a lot of tension that the film builds up to.

I also mentioned a pattern… well sometimes the pattern and repetitiveness of climbing on a boat, it getting bombed, almost drowning, climb aboard a new boat, gets bombed, almost drowns, swim to shore, find new boat, etc etc etc. For me this aspect got a little repetitive at the end and it became less intense for me.

Now I know that the characters are supposed to have very little dialogue and really art supposed to be drastically different from one another but I want that! If this was going to be the next Saving Private Ryan, well step it up with the character building because S.P.R has some of the best characters ever!

This was Nolan’s shortest film to date I believe and I don't know why. Maybe if it was stretched to the normal 2hr 30min runtime lick most Nolan films there could have been some better time shifts or character dialogue and building. I really wanted and needed that for me to be able to say that this film was incredible. While critically outstanding, it just didn’t connect with me. Still a good movie and worth the movie ticket, but it could have been better for me. Like I said, I know I'm in the minority when I say that but it just my Average Mans Opinion.

Rating: See it

-Nick