Dunkirk

Parental Rating: PG-13

Contains: Language    Violence    Adult Content    

Jill's Review

Opens July 21, 2017

Runs 106 minutes

This is the story of the rescue of over 300,000 soldiers from the beaches at Dunkirk during WWII. Soldiers from the British Empire, Belgium and France were driven to the beaches by the Germans and had nowhere else to go. They were surrounded by the water on one side and the Germans on the other, not to mention bombing by the German planes. It looked like imminent death. But, miraculously many of these soldiers were rescued by normal citizens in their small boats and watercrafts. The director, Christopher Nolan pieces together stories from the land, sea and air, with close up looks at what the actual soldiers were facing as they waited to be rescued. We see waves of soldiers on the beach trying to make it to boats. The film follows Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) as he does whatever it takes to survive. Then the film switches focus to Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his small boat as he sails to Dunkirk to help with the rescue efforts. Finally, we see Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden) as they fight off the German bombers from the air. The stories intertwine and overlap, but eventually end up at the beach with the rescue of these young and scared soldiers.

This is a great cinematic movie. It is beautifully shot and the score by Hans Zimmer is fantastic. The music ebbs and swells with the action - it is moving and stunning. There is no star of this film, but all of the actors do a fine job. Even Harry Styles (from the band One Direction) does a nice job in a small role. The large cast is a strength and weakness of the film. War is big and there were many different people affected by it. Thus, lots and lots of characters (and an amazing job with all of the extras and costumes, etc...) But, it was also less emotional with no main character to follow. The three storylines were a little confusing, also. They jumped back and forth in perspective and it took a little while to figure out what was going on. This is typical Christopher Nolan so that should not be a surprise. The Husband and I both liked the film. However, our biggest complaint is that we couldn't understand at least half of the dialogue. The accents were so thick it was difficult to understand what was being said. Luckily, the film wasn't dialogue heavy but still, we feel like we need to watch it one more time to catch anything we might have missed. Overall, a great film cinematically and well worth seeing. I just wish there had been some subtitles! Go see it.

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