re: I'm sure you guys have already discussed Dunkirk ad nauseum, but DAMN

Wasn't impressed the first time I saw it. Was in the "it was okay, not near the hype" category. It gets worse the more I think about it.

The air to air was extremely lame. Not just the fact that you only see one HE-111 in the air. (Goering promises Hitler that he can crush the Dunkirk salient and to do this he sends bombers in one at a time???) Not once did you ever feel like the rescue effort was in peril of failure if you're only dodging one bomber at a time. As little threat as the Germans posed in the movie you kind of have to start wondering how the French and British got their asses kicked all the way across France. Plus, anyone who has ever been in military or even aerobatic aircraft know there's a helluva lot more physical effort than what was shown. They looked like they were practicing landings at a municipal airfield, not cranking Gs in high performance aircraft in a fight for their lives. And then when the Brits did shoot at the bombers, how weak was the damage effect? Six .30 cals hosing down a relatively light armored aircraft like an HE would be blowing pieces off the wings and fuselage. Instead, we get the standard "aircraft that's been shot engages a smoke generator" that we've seen in numerous movies for 50 years. Weak sauce.

The British Army colonel makes a statement that the western end of the perimeter is within artillery range of German guns. Aaaaaaand, nothing. Did you ever see anything that resembled an artillery barrage? Have you ever seen what real live arty looks like when it hits a target? German 105s and 150s would have made a dramatic impact.

The boy's death was poorly done. He falls on the deck and then he's dead? If you're going to kill off the character like that to bring home the point of civilian sacrifices in the operation you have to give us more than a shove and fall.

The boat on the beach. Total shite show. So, Germans are close enough to take the boat under fire for "target practice" but can't see a group of Tommies diddy bopping down the beach in broad daylight to said boat? Oooookay. And then the technical aspects of the shooting. Four shots pop the hull. "Target practice". These holes later begin to take on water. After these holes start leaking, more holes are fired through the hull BELOW the first holes. I just about wrenched my shoulder throwing the bullshite Flag. Those bullets would have had to have been fired through feet (more likely yards at that flat angle) of water before impacting the hull. Those bullets would either skip off the surface and strike higher up the hull leaving dry holes or dig into the water and lose so much kinetic energy there's no way they'd penetrate a metal hull. Surprised no one else has mentioned this.

The non-linear delivery of the story just didn't work. I think it's sort of a stylistic concept of Nolan's that is supposed to be deep or profound. But it just came across as clunky here without any kind of payoff. It simply added a layer of complexity to the narrative that didn't need it.

I will give the movie a pass on the "it didn't look like 300,000 men were on the beach" point. I'm sure at the beginning when the effort was just naval ships there was some sort of organized rotation of troop off the perimeter and down to the beach. (A & B companies will head to the beach now and board the ship that arrives at the mole in an hour. C & D companies, extend your lines to cover A & B's frontage when they leave. You will then be relieved by 2d Battalion at 1100 and you head to the beach for the next ship.") And on and on. So that part didn't ring false to me.

But after the unadulterated praise and hype prior to seeing it, the movie was a huge letdown.

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Plus, anyone who has ever been in military or even aerobatic aircraft know there's a helluva lot more physical effort than what was shown. They looked like they were practicing landings at a municipal airfield, not cranking Gs in high performance aircraft in a fight for their lives. .

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Or maybe since they were actually in the aircraft during it, maybe the physical response is less severe than you are describing.

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Instead, we get the standard "aircraft that's been shot engages a smoke generator" that we've seen in numerous movies for 50 years. Weak sauce.

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So in a movie that is try it's best to be historically accurate, they actually made something less historically accurate and less exciting to a viewer?

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The boy's death was poorly done. He falls on the deck and then he's dead?

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Ummm I think that was kind of the point.

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The boat on the beach. Total shite show. So, Germans are close enough to take the boat under fire for "target practice" but can't see a group of Tommies diddy bopping down the beach in broad daylight to said boat?

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Why do you think they kept referencing the HOURS it was going to take for the tide to come in? And why do you think they pointed out the large dunes, and that the Germans could be anywhere on the other side of it?

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Those bullets would either skip off the surface and strike higher up the hull leaving dry holes or dig into the water and lose so much kinetic energy there's no way they'd penetrate a metal hull. Surprised no one else has mentioned this.

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Maybe because I thought it was possible, if not likely, that the water was coming in at incrementally because of WAVES.

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The non-linear delivery of the story just didn't work. I think it's sort of a stylistic concept of Nolan's that is supposed to be deep or profound. But it just came across as clunky here without any kind of payoff. It simply added a layer of complexity to the narrative that didn't need it.

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It wasn't always the easiest to follow, but once the stories converged, its purpose seemed more essential.

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After these holes start leaking, more holes are fired through the hull BELOW the first holes. I just about wrenched my shoulder throwing the bullshite Flag.

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You realized they were firing from ABOVE the boat, right? It's not like they were standing on the beach 20 feet away plinking at the damn thing with a pistol. The shooter(s) were holed up in a position 200-300 yards away looking DOWN on the beach and the boat. There was no flat trajectory, or bullets skipping on the water to worry about. I didn't think it took a genius level IQ to make this leap of reasoning but maybe they should administer an aptitude test for watching certain movies.

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Not sure what you were trying to say here. No way did those actors give me the impression they were in an actual dogfight.

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But they were in the actual plane while filming. You're expecting them to show some physical reaction in their faces or something, but since they didn't, maybe you're expecting something that would actually be the opposite of realistic.

Disagree with the criticisms on here. I saw in 70MM Imax yesterday and thought it was excellent. It captures the stress and tension better than some grand scale epic although I agree they could have done a better job in presenting the epic size of the operation.

In IMAX, the air scenes gave me vertigo, and literally cringed when they would get straffed by the Stukas. The story is told from more of an individual human perspective and the filming style sort of reminded me of a Kubrick film.

They all looked to be about as young as one could get to serve. They were all exhausted, scared, and deprived of almost every other basic necessity. They were confused and desperate.

Stop making excuses for it. It was a poorly constructed situation just to get us to the dramatic moral dilemma of tossing Frenchy overboard. From start to finish off that set piece defied common sense.



In like the very next scene, one of the soldiers in the boat made a similar short estimate, thinking it would only be a few hours. THEN when they grabbed the Dutch captain, they were surprised with the hours it would take still.

If it took ten minutes, it was still a stupid tactical move that even fresh boots out of training wouldn't make.

And yet you sit here and act like it's plot hole or something when you have days to reflect on it.

Or as I'm sitting in the theater thinking, "That's fricking dumb."

Apparently the only people in this thread who didn't like the movie were ace WW2 pilots

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Stop making excuses for it

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I'm not making excuses for it. I'm just showing you that Nolan walked us through a bunch of contextual clues to setup the basis of all your complaints.

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It was a poorly constructed situation just to get us to the dramatic moral dilemma of tossing Frenchy overboard. From start to finish off that set piece defied common sense.

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Since when is common sense an expectation of anybody in reality, let alone a bunch of young, scared grunt soldiers fighting for survival with no direction? I mean much human nature defies common sense.

But in this case, in their shoes, with no other known option of escape, with an enemy closing in and, that was far from something that would defy common sense in that context.

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If it took ten minutes, it was still a stupid tactical move that even fresh boots out of training wouldn't make.

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Nobody was trained for that scenario.

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Or as I'm sitting in the theater thinking, "That's fricking dumb."

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Because apparently empathy was not within your scope of reasoning regarding this.

But in this case, in their shoes, with no other known option of escape, with an enemy closing in and, that was far from something that would defy common sense in that context

Well, first of all, there was an organized defense of the beachhead with scheduled withdrawals when naval ships arrived. So why this group of soldiers decided to freelance and wander outside the defensive perimeter to sit in a boat which allowed you no means of escape that wasn't going to free itself with the incoming tide for at the very least several hours doesn't pass even cursory inspection.

On the one hand, the movie shows us thousands of soldiers standing calmly in columns even under aerial assault (which was accurate). But then you want us to accept that these young men, all of whom received basic infantry training and survived weeks of intense combat - the ultimate tactical/survival classroom - forego the very basics of tactical movement and unit security just to go sit in a beached ship for hours when they didn't even know the shipworthy status of that boat? So, which is it? A well-organized evacuation under perilous conditions? Or an all-out, pants pissing panic that caused them to ignore the most rudimentary mistakes of a tactical nature? Because those troops diddybopping down the beach didn't look white knuckled panic to me.

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Where were the Germans?

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That was very, very intentional to make the Germans all the more terrifying unseen force. You missed the point.