[Closed] Dunkirk (spoilers within)

Agreed, incredible film.

The volume was loud for us too. For me though it added to the atmospherics and gave an indication of how terrifying being attacked by stukas would have been.

I'm generally not a fan of Nolan but I think I'll go and we this.

Aye, the volume certainly added to the realism of the whole experience! The soundtrack worked really well too and there were absolutely no lulls at all throughout the film IMO.

Most 2nd war films are rather good nowadays like Saving Private Ryan etc. 🙂

My wife's boss owns the boat 🙂

Did we win this time?

Watched it last night on a baby Imax. Thought it was awesome.

I occasionally took a couple of seconds to work out where we were on the timeline, but it didn't detract too much.

Definitely want to see in on the BFI Imax now.

It is really good;isn't it? Agree with the loud comments.

Watched it on Friday. Thought it was excellent.

Think I preferred the human damage being left to my imagination rather than in my face like SPR.

Went to see it last night. That's one superb bit of cinema. Very little special effects, not much dialogue, just a small part of a huge story told immensely well.
You've gotta be a hard man not to cry.

Took my dad to see it this afternoon. Best film I've seen at the cinema in a long time. 10/10 from my dad which is very high praise given that he says no decent films have been made since about 1986!!

I was expecting it to be loud, but when those Stuka's first come in it's almost terrifying just being sat in the cinema, let alone what the real thing must have been like

Thinking of taking my 90 year old mum who remembers the original. She's not impressed with the trailers as the men are all a lot cleaner than she remembers .
A loud sound track should be just her thing.

Saw it tonight in IMAX and it was bloody fantastic.

Tom Glynn Carney who plays Mark Rylance's son Peter in the film, is a close family friend (his mum is godmother to my youngest) is going to be a huge star and I've been watching him in plays and stuff since he was 10 but the soundtrack and the cinematography just blew me away.

hmm... [url= http://warisboring.com/dunkirk-is-a-booming-bloodless-bore/ ]‘Dunkirk’ Is a Booming, Bloodless Bore - War has never been this dull[/url]

While it was certainly loud, it made for such a contrast when (SPOILERS) he shoots down the final stuka at the end without any fuel and you see him just glide across the beach in almost total silence.

Amazing film.

Wasn't over impressed to be honest, felt like it would have been three good films, edited into a single not so great one.

None of the characters except the father felt anything more than two dimensional and the constant switching from beach to boat to plane meant none of those built up enough steam or tension at any one time.

The final spitfire scene was laughable, he could have glided all the way back to Blighty at that rate and the "flyby" looked incredibly Gerry Anderson by comparison with the rest of the effects.

It was ok, but certainly not fantastic.

YMMV and clearly does for some.

did enjoy the film (defects included) but was disappointed that it forgot the 'forgotten' - the poor sods who formed the rearguard and enabled the beaches to be cleared, their reward was a lack of publicity and 5 years in a POW camp - my good lady had a whinge as that's what happened to her dad, he never talked about it, however near the end when alzheimers had set in he appeared to go into combat mode - 'get down, get ready, they're coming' and he would take cover behind something................

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7750005/Dunkirk-the-soldiers-left-behind.html

Mrs BigJohn & I thought it was tremendous, magnificent, marvellous and made us feel real empathy and gratitude for those brave and stoic people.

A really powerful and gratifying experience.

But on the way home she turned to me and said ... but it wasn't a very good film, was it.

I had to agree.

If the pilot who dumped in the sea had used his elbows to splay the canopy out of the runners, he'd have got out with much less fuss/quicker.

Speaking as someone who's had an emergency exit breifing for a spitfire 8)

I though it was ok, not bad, not amazing.

After all these positive comments here I was surprised to be left disappointed really, the opening scene I thought was great. Went downhill from there and kept going down.

I can't believe some of the camera shots, would have been easy to eliminate the view in the background of a blast furnace or a modern crane in loads of shots. Anachronisms EVERYWHERE you looked. And the continuity between the two wholly different beaches with vastly different numbers of soldiers. very very poor. Might just be me, but just looked lazy and cheap.

I can't understand how all the bullets fired into that boat were followed by gallons of water pouring in. If you were shooting at a boat, you'd aim above the waterline, surely, rather than shoot into the water 10 metres in front where the bullets would just spin and lose velocity.

Saw this in the week and thought it close to being brilliant but the timeline was mangled, the target practice below the waterline and the laughable last gliding scene let it down badly.

From the reviews I was expecting better.

Well just saw it and i thought it was bloomin brilliant... 10 out of 10

Went last night and thought it was great. 9/10

It would've been better if he hadn't got the wheels down in time and the spit had dug in and flipped. That just felt a little bit too 'happy ending' for my tastes, despite the fact the pilot would have spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.

It was a spectacular film, but it just felt like all the death and destruction was a bit too detached. More death of the main characters would have been a bit less Hollywood, but a bit more affecting.

I can't believe some of the camera shots, would have been easy to eliminate the view in the background of a blast furnace or a modern crane in loads of shots. Anachronisms EVERYWHERE you looked. And the continuity between the two wholly different beaches with vastly different numbers of soldiers. very very poor. Might just be me, but just looked lazy and cheap

Yes, Nolan's aversion to using CGI might have worked against him here. Not once did I get the impression of 300,000 soldiers or more than 3 Spitfires.

Agree with a lot of the points made.

Haven't seen continuity editing that bad since The Count of Monte Cristo. The Weymouth harbour scenes with clear shots of the 1958 Weymouth Pavilion (and others have said you could see the 2012 Jurassic Skyline although I didn't spot it) are a bit inexcusable. It matters because the whole set up was meant to be one of immersion which is the excuse for no CGI, script, character development, context or backstory.

I don't think he did justice to the scale of it.

And Branagh was a bit wasted in my view.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed it I just don't see how you'd ever give it 10/10.

I think it was an immersive experience but it was far from perfect.

I felt the scale of the event was completely wrong, it looked small and in isolation.

The actual evacuation and use of civilian boats wasn't really given enough time and seemed rushed.

The spitfire part at the end was poor, like watching a Wes Anderson film for a few minutes.

I did enjoy it overall but think it missed the mark on the above.

The only anachronism which stood out for me was the interior of the train at the end - I vaguely recall it as 1970s british rail?

The sound quality was poor in the imax at which I saw it. Bass distortion, swamped dialogue.

Great film though.

Ermehgerd, that was exhausting.

The look on Branagh's face when he was preparing to die - that will stay with me.

The score made it.

As with all of Nolan's stuff (caveat - haven't seen Interstellar yet) it had moments of film-making genius, and moments of utter lack of care and silliness.

Looking at it just as a piece of cinema it is close to brilliant - immersive, engaging and brave. If the sound design doesn't win an Oscar there's something wrong. I enjoyed the juggled narrative but can see why it might annoy some viewers.

Looking at it as an accurate document of those events, it's obviously flawed.

Loved the in joke of having Hardy speaking pretty much all his lines from behind a mask.

It was riveting and quite a few moments I was tensed up

Liked -

The way it jumped straight in
The sound of the planes (Stukas!)

Disliked -

Lack of scale (only about a dozen small boats? Empty beaches)
Unnecessary timeline shifting
The youngest kid on the boat
The French guy swapping uniforms at the beginning was so obvious and then built up into that needless confrontation
And +1 to lack of rearguard story

Overall I enjoyed it, probably wouldn't watch it again, not a great film but good entertainment if that makes sense

colournoise - Member
If the sound design doesn't win an Oscar there's something wrong.

Bit late but watched this last night, i will admit in advance that i have read a lot around this period of history.
It was shoddy and poorly constructed and utterly failed to convey the sheer scale if what actually happened It looked like 3 or 4 boats turned up and lifted a few battalions off the beach? The RAF lost around 200 aircraft, six destroyers sunk and a further 200 navy ships lost- to be frank it was very poor and the 2004 BBC series portrays the whole situation more accurately.

Bit late but watched this last night, i will admit in advance that i have read a lot around this period of history.
It was shoddy and poorly constructed and utterly failed to convey the sheer scale if what actually happened It looked like 3 or 4 boats turned up and lifted a few battalions off the beach? The RAF lost around 200 aircraft, six destroyers sunk and a further 200 navy ships lost- to be frank it was very poor and the 2004 BBC series portrays the whole situation more accurately.

& I thought Barry Norman was dead!

Thanks for that but was it a good film apart from the dissection?

Thanks essel! High praise indeed

Just for the record my other halfs grandfather was evacuated from Dunkirk and he said you couldn't swing a cat on the beach

Ok Barry, I haven't seen it but is it worth seeing? I'm no critic really but for Joe Bloggs is it worth watching?
There's plenty of discrepancies in most 'fact based' films as you well know.

Totally failed for me on many fronts . Failed to convey the scale of the whole thing was it's biggest failing, seemed to go very quickly from boats trying to get soldiers off the beach to being back in England which I actually was glad of because I was totally bored by then . The longest bit of gliding ever by the spitfire at the end . Was front crawl the only swimming stroke that anybody could do in those days ? The inside the abandoned boat scene was just silly . For me the dogfight scenes didn't seem very realistic . Overall I didn't care who lived and who died by the end . Oh and Kenneth Brannagh , I know of his pedigree but his performance was just so wooden . Others obviously disagreed .

The little thing that grieved me slightly was the burning spitfire at the end; totally missing the engine! And an obvious pole holding the prop in place. Sometimes it sucks knowing how things are put together in real life; obvious physics and mechanical 'nopes' in films really jar with me but seem to pass most people by.

On second thoughts, maybe the lack of a Merlin would explain the Spit's exceptional glide slope moments earlier? 😆

I loved it, especially the soundtrack. Amazing!!

Enjoyed some parts 7/10 from me.
Preferred the original.

Given the Spitfire was out of fuel, what would have caused it to go up in flames like that...?

Given the Spitfire was out of fuel, what would have caused it to go up in flames like that...?

When the pilot fired the flare into the cockpit to destroy it so it does not fall into the hands of the enemy?

Ok film. Some brilliant elements, but some significant 'meh' bits too.

The French guy swapping uniforms at the beginning was so obvious and then built up into that needless confrontation

yeah i assumed our young protagonist was fully aware his new mate was a frenchy? the audience were! so that revelation scene bugged me a bit.

I didnt notice any of the continuity errors mentioned but they wring true in hindsight reading this, but i did often wonder where the hell everyone was!! some beaches were desolate!

I don't mind the inaccuracies it was the fact that it completely failed to deliver the scale of the evacuation and the numbers of casualties that the BEF suffered.

Simple things like the monumental loss of aircraft and ships were not shown/mentioned? Anyone with little knowledge of Dunkirk probably watched and wondered what the fuss was about.

By contrast Saving Private Ryan leaves you in no doubt about what it was like landing on a beach in Normandy

Agree with much of the above - if you immerse yourself into it and let the detail wash by then it's an intense piece of cinema. But then walking out of the cinema the obvious issues mentioned above pop up - one noboduy's mentioned is the apparently random sea state during the whole thing. I've certainly never had a day in the channel where there was so much variation! FWIW I can forgive the gliding spitfire at the end because the time line is so chopped up that there's no guarantee we're not seeing the same events from inside & outside the cockpit.

It either needed Ben Hur levels of extras to fill it out or some CGI.

Totally failed for me on many fronts . Failed to convey the scale of the whole thing was it's biggest failing

Does it have to though? We all know the scale of it. The film concentrates on a small part with overlapping events and characters. They don't even try to show all of it. And that would have required lots of CGI special effects which ruin films like this. They made it personal, they made it very realistic and they conveyed the slight hopelessness and immense gravity of the situation immensely well. I cried like a baby.

The only thing that bothers me was the Spitfire prop on a broom handle at the end.

Agreed ^

It isn't your typical recent war film. More focussed on individuals and I thought they told their stories well and conveyed the emotion well.
And I'm glad it wasn't just a 2 hour blood bath to be honest.

A lot of war films weren't 'saving private ryan' all action drama type stuff.

The sound was great. My wife jumped EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

😆

I very nearly left after the first few scenes. I suppose i expected it to be a bit more of a documentary film that it turned out to be. The sound of the German rifle fire was way too loud (I've been shot at a number of times), as soon as i heard it i realised what kind of film it was going to be. The rest of it was pure fantasy so if you go expecting that then you'll be okay with it.
i spent the final twenty minutes of it with my fingers in my ears as the noise was painful.
They also managed to make real flying Spitfires look like GCI.

Good to hear some dissent on here. I was underwhelmed by it as well - the PR team did a great job on it but I think it will fade from collective memory very quickly;

The idea of showing the event through some small stories is fine but, as other have already said, it completely failed to give the impression of scale. I don't understand the lack of CGI, Matte painting backgrounds or even just careful shot framing. The opening scene I thought was very tense but a most of the rest of the film left me a bit bored. The score was overbearing and what little diaglogue there was I found hard to hear.

Also no infantryman would have started running straight down a street if they started getting fired upon, or try and climb a wooden gate in the firing line- I know I need to stop and revert to "a willing suspension of disbelief"

Were they really real flying Spitfires? It looked like one plane copy and pasted twice, wing tip to wing tip.

No mention of the other boy bands that mounted the rearguard. ©The Mash Report.

Only just seen this. While it has flaws, I thought it was tremendous

Special mention to Hans Zimmer's score, the best since, well, Inception. The weaving of Elgar's variations into it was brilliant

I agree Mr Inthepan.

It was a great film, one of if not the best of the year.

I can't see how it was ever scripted or written to be a full on accurate description of the horror and carnage that no doubt actually happened.

For me it was a cracking film that simply presented the views and actions of a few select people.

More of a leave your brain on the floor and enjoy the spectacle and not trying to capture the event like Saving Private Ryan did etc.

If you expected that then you would be dissapointed, as a few above clearly are.

As for it being too loud - shutup grandad 😆

watched it monday. As others have said, not a traditional 'war film' but a clever piece of story telling, which left those of us that went (wife, daughter and me) in pieces for various reasons. I don't think it needed scale, it was part of the story that although the numbers were in the 100's of thousands, every single digit of that was a story - not many of those there for real had a 'yeah, I was at Dunkirk, went to the beach, got a boat home' experience, and the 1 week / 1 day / 1 hour time references at the start all coming in together allow you to extrapolate.

My wife is scared of water and found the drowning / sinking scenes terrifying.

And Elgar finished me off....very clever scoring.

Late to the Dunkirk party, but yesterday it was raining, so we dipped into the cinema, Dunkirk was starting in half hour, booked. Sat, enthralled.
What a great film. Glad I didn't go to a Vue cinema with their sound system, cos those Stukas would've given me a heart attack !

Ps. first film in a VERY LONG TIME where I didn't notice any of the audience, talking, pissing about with their phone or chomping food! Had to be good 🙂

Watched Dunkirk last week and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fantastic imagery, oppressive soundtrack and claustrophobic drowning scenes.

The hatchet mish-mash timeline was ultimately quite clever and as the purist pointed out ...

FWIW I can forgive the gliding spitfire at the end because the time line is so chopped up that there's no guarantee we're not seeing the same events from inside & outside the cockpit

Clever.

[i]BR livery on the railway carriage seats was plain lazy. It wouldn't have taken much effort to find a more appropriate carriage. [/i]

Was kinda thinking of going to see it, but then I read the summary in the WaPo and remembered how annoying Christopher Nolan and changed my mind:

“Dunkirk” is director Christopher Nolan’s World War II movie about the real-life incident in which Allied forces were surrounded and trapped on Dunkirk beach — and everyday heroes helped rescue them, despite the risk of danger and death. The movie’s war violence is realistic and intense, with heavy bombing and shooting and many deaths (though very little blood). Planes crash in the ocean, ships fill with water and sink, and an oil slick catches fire, burning many soldiers. A teen civilian is injured, and a man walks into the ocean, presumably to commit suicide. Language includes two uses of “f---” and one “Christ,” and there’s one scene with beer. Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy star, but there are many characters, some of whom aren’t clearly distinguished from others. That, plus Nolan’s time-twisting technique, can make the story challenging to follow. But it has messages of bravery, teamwork and sacrifice, and persistent teens and adults will be rewarded with a powerful, visceral experience.

I went to see it with the entire geriatric population of Johannesburg which I hoped would add to the atmosphere but basically added a background track of Eric shouting at Doris who didn't know what was going on.

I thought it was a good entertaining immersive visual film, but nothing new and largely forgettable. Whilst there's not much you can do with the chosen story, it was entirely predictable.... leave your brain at the door.

I'm glad Tom Hardy had the only memorable role. Man-crush still intact.

[i]..which may have created this apparent 5minute glide.[/i]

Bleedin obvious to me.

[i]entertaining immersive visual film[/i]

Not sure what else you'd want from a visit to the cinema.

Exactly my point DezB

[i]entertaining immersive visual film[/i]

Not sure what else you'd want from a visit to the cinema.

a more sophisticated plot which isn't just made more complex by messing with the timeline of subsequent scenes. I appreciate that the story is pretty fixed but the subplots could have been more complex.

Why? it's just a war film.
I'm all for sophisticated, complex films, hate lowest common denominator drivel, but I got more than I expected from a war film with Dunkirk.

Left me feeling ‘what was all the fuss about?’. Oddly unconvincing and seemed full of one dimensional characters. I’ll admit it was watched on a small screen, so I can only surmise it was all about the big screen and the visuals. There was little story telling beyond what we know already, and it certainly seemed a lot smaller event than what really happened.

I turned it off after 20 minutes.

I watched it for the first time two nights ago. I thought it was pretty good to be honest and I am debating about whether my 9 and 6 year olds could potentially see it over the next few months.

It doesn't all have to be a shoot em up all the time. The single thing I thought worked really well was how much a lot of the characters seemed to be going "so, what the **** [u]is[/u] going on here" as this really was a rout (albeit one that could have gone much worse).

I would have liked to see something about the guys who actually held the perimeter as some of the British troops involved were deliberately left behind to be taken prisoner so the bulk could get away. That is all I would change / add.

Actually, one other thing, wouldn't the spitfire shooting down the Stuka have been stalled by the recoil from eight brownings?

It was not a rout....

French; 92,000 killed, 250,000 wounded. c.3,500 casualties per division.
BEF; 3,457 killed, 13,602 wounded. c.1,700 casualties per division.
Dutch; 2,157 killed, 6,889 wounded. c.900 casualties per division.

Belgian; 7,500 killed, 15,850 wounded. c.1000 casualties per division.

In 8 weeks give or take 6000 casualties a day

Watched it over the hols with my dad. I’d read a few negatives in previous reviews so i think i focused on them - but it started badly when they were walking through the pristine streets of a town that had had the shit bombed out of it.
Every uniform brand new.
Modern building in the backgrounds
Modern promenade furniture
A complete lack of scale of the whole evacuation
Considering the budget it was a disapointment.

I really enjoyed it. I like the jumbled time line as it added to the confusion of the situation the characters were in. It would have been good to see something of the rear guard, the gliding of the spitfire was a bit much at the end but overall I really enjoyed the film.

It was not a rout....

I was talking about the whole of the Fall of France. Which was a rout that ended with a remarkable mix of courage, organisation (as far as possible) and a massive stroke of luck as the Channel calmed to be a millpond where normally quite big rollers go a long way up the beach.

The liaison between the French and the BEF was pretty poor in general and Gamelin and Georges were woeful commanders, basing themselves in hard to contact chateaux and occasionally breaking down in tears in front of subordinates.

None of which detracts from the individual acts of courage such as Fairey Battles conducting suicidal raids against the Meuse bridges, for example.

Just got around to watching this, good film but no masterpiece.
I thought start was poor it gave you no real impression of the desperation of trying to escape the Germans and get home & the empty beaches when in reality these were jam packed, as was the shoreline with boats already sunken or damaged.
I was expecting some epic explosion when the oil caught fire.
The spitfire scene at the end was pretty poor.
I actually like how the 3 timelines were done and visually it was fantastic.
The stand out role for me was the father on the boat.

I thought it was terrible ,it felt like a low budget small independent production. Yeah I know blaring sound & mega special effects & car chases do not make a good film (shudder Michael Bay).

The scale just felt wrong half a dozen boats , a Stuka & 3 spitfires. One of which can fly for 10 mins after running out of fuel pffft.

I honestly was left with a feeling of disbelief at the end of how it had a score of 9.0 on imdb.

Maybe I just dont know a good film 😐

The stand out role for me was the father on the boat.

Was watchable; not great ... certainly no Saving Private Ryan.

Very British low budget feel about it.

The 1958 film was on over the break , watching the new one just showed how
good the original was. Not very impressed by the new one, I felt the timeline playing was heavy handed rather than skilled , there was a story there but it was not told.