re: 'Dunkirk' Discussion Thread - Spoilers

I have to go the other way. Was a good movie but was underwhelmed. (Side note: 70mm IMAX may have been the biggest disappointment. Saw it at the Cinemark in Boca Raton. The entire time I was thinking "this is IMAX?" Normal screen, sounded pretty much the same).

On to the movie: the biggest weakness was the complete lack of scale. You never get the feeling that the entire British Army is in peril of elimination from the Luftwaffe. Single HEs attacking at a time? There should have been entire squadrons of level bombers hitting the pier or bigger ships. The air to air action was a real let down. Did any of the fighters ever crank in more than 30° angle of bank or 15° nose up/down? ACM is violent and physically grueling. The pilots looked like they were turning final to land a Cessna at hometown airport. The dogfight where the Bf109 was on the tail of the RAF plane and the other RAF fighter was daisy-chained on the Bf's tail looked like they were towing banners along the beach. If I had a 109 blasting cannon shells at me I would have been doing some yanking and banking and pulling a little more than 1.2Gs. And when either a fighter or bomber was hit you could almost hear the Special Effects Coordinator say, "Turn on smoke generator NOW!" You get hosed down by six or eight .30 cals pieces of aircraft are getting blown off.

I was prepared for the non-chronological format so that didn't throw me. But I'm not sure all movie goers ever pieced together that Cillian Murphy's shell shocked character was the same from the night scene on the life boat. More of an observation than a criticism.

The death of the young kid was a headscratcher. He falls and then is dead? Huh? Plus, his whole arc could have been eliminated without losing anything. I'm guessing he was written in to bring attention to (and personalize) the sacrifices the civilians made in the rescue effort. Just thought it was executed pretty clumsily and unbelievably.

Minor quibble: one scene panning vehicles on the beach looked like there was a Jeep. The BEF in 1940 had no jeeps yet as they weren't being produced until '41. Not a big deal but if we're exalting this as an all-time classic it bears noting.

Another minor technical quibble: did anyone else notice the bullet holes appearing in the hull made no sense? There was water rushing in the first grouping and then holes appear about a foot below those. Wouldn't that part of the hull be below the water line already?

I thought it was a decent, but nowhere near classic movie. Did a bad job of imparting the danger to the sealift as a whole - unless you think the Luftwaffe had about a dozen planes total.