Dunkirk

A Movie Review

Dunkirk is more than what you would expect, and it’s directed by Christopher Nolan, so there’s going to be high expectations for this movie.  Not only is this movie extremely detailed, intense, and well structured, but it’s captivating all throughout the movie.  

For those of you that want a review without spoilers, I’ll talk about the movie real quickly here, but the score will still be after the spoilers for those who want to read the rest of my review.  This movie has an amazing cast, smart and perfected direction from Christopher Nolan, and it’s an action-packed war movie.  Why wouldn’t you want to see it?  I highly recommend this movie, and it’s a movie people, like me, would want to see again and again.

Now onto the rest of my review, but there will be spoilers included.

The first thing I’d like to talk about with this movie, is the introduction.  Christopher Nolan did an amazing job with the introduction of this movie.  The first scene consists of some British soldiers roaming the streets of Dunkirk, to find flyers coming down from the sky.  The flyers say “This is you” (a map with an arrow pointed at Dunkirk) and “This is us, You’re surrounded.”  I love how the flyers are included in this scene, because it gives you a quick feel of what the British and French soldiers at Dunkirk are going to be dealing with in the movie.  Then, after the soldiers read the flyers, they are suddenly being shot at and they start to run.  Sadly, all the soldiers are killed except for Tommy, who barely gets away while being chased down with bullets flying by him.  Tommy then almost gets shot at by French soldiers, but they let him by.  I love how this first scene is so intense and I love how it grabbed my attention right away.  It displays fear, danger, and kicks off the main story.

Christopher Nolan split this movie by three stories.  The main story being the one with the soldiers at Dunkirk, the second story being an old man and two teens taking a boat to go and help at Dunkirk, and the third story is from the perspective of two air force pilots.

The main story comes from the perspective of three soldiers, Tommy, Gibson, and Alex.  Their story consists of them trying their best to survive and escape Dunkirk.  They experience death, fear, suspicion, and it seems like wherever they went, they barely made it out.  Every time they think they’re safe and think they’ll be fine, either the ship they’re on gets blown up, or they get attacked somehow.  This aspect of their story seems to be trying to show the audience that soldiers in war are never safe, and will always be attacked and in danger.  Some people probably already know this, but this movie displays it very well.  

Fionn Whitehead, who plays Tommy, did an amazing job playing his character.  He portrays Tommy as courageous, thoughtful, and strong in a great way, and he got me to sympathize with Tommy, due to him being in dangerous and frightening situations.  I felt the fear and struggle his character felt throughout the movie.

Aneurin Barnard, the actor who plays Gibson, did a great job of showing a soldier in complete shock.  Gibson really doesn’t speak much, but Barnard gives his character expression in a way that you could tell what he’s feeling, which is a hard thing to do.

Harry Styles surprisingly did a great job playing Alex in this movie.  He brought elements of suspicion, passion, and his character also displayed a feeling of being broken inside.  Alex is an interesting character, and he provides to the plot in a good way.

The second story is about an old man named Mr. Dawson, Peter, and George.  These three men decide to get on Mr. Dawson’s boat to go to Dunkirk and see if they can help out the soldiers there.  Along the way, they run into a plane wreck that Cillian Murphy(character is unnamed) was on.  They let him on the boat and he seems to be shocked and exhausted.  Their story is pretty unique in this film, because they’re the only actual civilians in the movie, and I’ve never seen a war movie that had a plot with civilians like this.  They only run into a couple conflicts, the first being with Cillian Murphy’s character.  Cillian Murphy is a British soldier that came from Dunkirk and he tells Mr. Dawson not to go there and to turn around, and at one point he fights with Mr. Dawson, George, and Peter over the wheel of the boat, and he ends up knocking George down into the inside of the boat, and George knocks his head on a pipe.  Eventually George goes blind, then dies.  I thought this was a great display of how anyone can really die in a war, but I also thought it was stupid that he died, since George didn’t need to go with Peter and Mr. Dawson to Dunkirk, and he could’ve been more careful.  The second conflict or event of this story was when they found the pilot “Collins” in his sinking plane.  They rescued him and let him stay on the boat.  The third conflict they have is when they rescue soldiers from a boat that was bombed.  Tommy, Gibson, and Alex were also on the bombed boat, but they were saved by Mr. Dawson and his boat.  This lead to them almost being attacked by a plane, but they ended up surviving.  

The third story, or perspective, of this movie is from two Air Force pilots, Farrier and Collins.  Farrier is played by Tom Hardy, and Collins is played by Jack Lowden, a pretty new and unknown actor.  Their story starts with them fighting enemy planes, then they have issues with fuel.  Collins is eventually taken down, but he lands his plane onto the ocean safely.  Farrier ends up still going to Dunkirk on his own, and along the way he takes down enemies that were bombing a boat, and some others that were just flying around.  But then, he gets to Dunkirk and while he runs out of fuel, he saves the day by taking down enemy planes that were about to bomb soldiers along the coast of Dunkirk.  He then lands on the beach, and is captured at the very end of the movie.  I love how Christopher Nolan included this perspective of the Air Force, because not only was it unique, but it brought even more intensity and variety to the movie.

My favorite story was of course the main story, since you see them go through the most chaos, and they’re shown the most in the movie.  Characters like Tommy and Alex were very interesting to watch, and you end up always wanting them to make it out alive.  The fact that they get in near death situations so much throughout the movie really makes their story the most intriguing.  I love how this movie includes so many perspectives, and each one is so entertaining and doesn’t get boring once.  The intense chaos in the movie doesn’t ever feel like too much, and keeps the story very alive.

Now I’ll talk about what I didn’t like about this movie.

There were only a couple things I didn’t like with this movie.  The first being the character of George.  He was a very wimpy and childish character, and even though he died innocently, you just don’t feel sympathy for him.  This is mainly due to how he died in a very stupid way, his death easily could’ve been avoided if he didn’t stupidly decide to try and fend off Cillian Murphy’s character when he tried to turn the boat.  I don’t know, I just thought his character was kind of stupid.  Secondly, I didn’t like the minimal dialogue.  I love movies that have great dialogue, or at least a good deal of great dialogue.  The dialogue isn’t bad in this film or anything, there just isn’t a lot of it.  I’m the kind of person that like movies driven by dialogue, like Annie Hall.  The minimal talking in this movie doesn’t ruin anything, I just think they could’ve had more in the script.  The final thing I didn’t like about this movie was how they strangely never really showed the actual enemy soldiers.  Of course you see their fighter jets, and you hear their guns and all that, but it was strange how you don’t see the actual soldiers.  I think this could’ve been done purposely, so this movie wasn’t focused on the enemy, but our soldiers and the characters in the film.  In a way, it’s good that Nolan did this, but it’s just a bit strange.

Dunkirk is in my top 3 movies of this year so far.  It’s really an amazing movie.  There is very few things I didn’t like about it, and many things I loved about it.  Christopher Nolan never seems to disappoint, and he continues his great directing streak with this film

Movie Grade: 9/10