Dunkirk Review
PG13: War Experience and Language
Warner Bros. Pictures, Syncopy, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Canal+, Cine+, Studiocanal
1 Hr and 47 Minutes (THANK GOD!)
Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James D’Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy
INTRO: Christopher Nolan. Dunkirk. No further introduction is necessary. Let's cut the bullshit. Here’s the review. This is going to be a pretty short review because the lesser you know, the better.
“Dunkirk” opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in.
THE GOOD: In a modern age where nearly every movie is filmed in digital, people consider any director who decides to shoot in an old school millimeter format is criticized as being ambitious. Quentin Tarantino recently did it with The Hateful Eight, and it worked in his benefit as that film played as an homage to western films of the 60s in its style and its aesthetic. At first, you question why Dunkirk is filmed this way, but then you realize he's going for the 50s style cinematography. There is a handful of establishing shots where the frame can be mistaken for a 50s movie or a cinematic newsreel that played at the early age of cinema. In regards to effects and craftsmanship, I consider this film more of a war epic version of Ben-Hur.
It may be only July, but I feel this has a long lasting power to next year’s Oscars going against Baby Driver in the sound categories. I don’t notice the usage of sound that much when viewing a film, but this and Baby Driver are two of the only films of this year (so far) that made me both notice its usage but also fascinate me of how it's utilized.
If it's not the sounds of explosions moving you, then it's the electrifying score of Hans Zimmer. Zimmer commands an orchestrated army of violinists throughout the entire movie. Just the chords that are played have you at the edge of your seat. Even when a character is just walking, that violin chord plays at a rapid speed just gripping you. This is the type of music that I would play anytime I would have to deal with the MTA when my trains are delayed as I anticipate it to come through my station. Nolan may be the boss, but Zimmer is the God. Honestly, this is hands down one of the best scores he’s ever composed right up there with Man of Steel.
What Nolan does so perfectly in my eyes is how he’s able to captivate his audience through his visual framework, immersing them into his world. You don’t see this cast as actors or even characters but real people with an occupation. The film has a number amount of characters for we follow a number of plot threads you have
- Tom Hardy in the air.
- Mark Rylance and his sons on a boat.
And most of all,
- the young men trying to survive while waiting for rescue.
Just like how these plots are divided, I’m going to go over the strengths of each designated thread.
Tom Hardy in the air
One of the most engaging plot threads of the three is when the film centers on Hardy as
Royal Air Force pilot Farrier. The reason I say this is because when Nolan shoots the sequences of dogfighting through the IMAX that he created just for those scenes alone, he captures it in a way where you feel you’re either playing a Star Fox game and riding a rollercoaster at the same time. When the plane does a barrel roll so does the camera and the utilization of sound that accompanies it.
This is one of the biggest reasons why the film needs to be seen in either two formats; IMAX or 4DX. With IMAX, you have the sound that makes you feel like you’re on the battlefield and in the air. With 4DX you can experience the sensation of flight when the seats move as Farrier shoots planes down.
- Mark Rylance and his sons on a boat.
Through the entire cast, Rylance provides one of the best performances of the year. Though he is a man of not so many words, his character adds the element of mystery and suspense that is mostly needed when having a war epic like this. When you’re introduced to him and his sons, you have no idea what is going on even after they rescue a survivor stranded at sea played by Cillian Murphy. Murphy is also great due to the fact that he’s the audiences’ avatar who is suspicious of what is going on.
- The young men trying to survive while waiting for some sort of rescue.
To quote Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption, “Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying.” That quote is the entire arc of everything that these young men go through. Even when you think at a certain point it's all sunshine and rainbows, the film deviates and still go back to the cruel reality of war.
Right in the beginning, the film immediately proves that you can be a PG13 war drama and still display brutality. You have bodies blown, wounded, and bleeding to the last drop but yet there are no scenes of violence. How can you show the brutality of WWII with a PG13 rating even without depicting violence? Easy, just craft a good story. Where 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge benefitted from its violence as we focused on a character who was against violence, Dunkirk prospers from not showing violence while having every character go through a violent situation.The film emotionally tests your endurance as you feel for all these young men experience sequential traumatic events of hell.
At some point, you just turn into the LEAVE BRITTANY ALONE guy but instead of saying, LEAVE BRITTANY ALONE?! You’re saying—
THE BAD: Despite all these good things to say, the movie is repetitious in its sequences of action. You have all these subplots following an arc and yet you barely any dimensional characters. You don’t get to know anyone’s names, or you’re able to get any quotable lines of dialogue. You don’t have a line as iconic as —
LAST STATEMENT: Dunkirk is an amazingly crafted epic with masterful direction from Nolan and a perfect balance of both visual splendor and good ol’ fashioned storytelling.
Rating: 4/5 | 86%
Super Scene: TOM HARDY’S NEED FOR SPEED
