Beat back by German troops to the French port city of
Dunkirk, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops wait in desperation for an
unlikely deliverance. Over the course of this harrowing week, we witness a
French soldier trying to smuggle his way onto a fleeting British carrier, a
dogfight between RAF and Luftwaffe pilots, and a civilian and his sons
answering their country’s call to aid in the evacuation. Christopher Nolan’s most
solemn and serious movie to date is a visually arresting, fluid, even balletic experience
told with minimal dialogue and the aid of fine performances including Kenneth
Branagh, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, and Tom Hardy. The movie does reach a
problem area however when the panoply of the filmmaking itself starts to take
precedence over the actual events it is depicting.
*** ½ out of ****
