Dunkirk (2017)

Plot: Surrounded by the German Army, the British Try to Evacuate 400,000 British and French Soldier off the Beaches of Dunkirk.

Stars: Fion Whitehead,  Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh

Dunkirk as a remarkable movie, and probably the best war movie since Das Boot or the Thin Red Line. Only 1:40 minutes long,  Nolan doesn't let you breathe for a second, as the film constantly pushes you along until the rather Patriotic and stirring ending.  It really needs to seen in a theater (I saw the 70 mm print) to experience the incredible cinematography and direction.  Whether it was made without CGI or not, it certainly looks like it wasn't. I'd be surprised if it doesn't win the AA.  However, the sound can be overwhelming at times.

The other remarkable thing is the minimal dialog. To misquote Churchill: never in movie history have so many, said so little, for so long.

The result? Undeveloped characters - but that's actually a good thing. We focus on 6 characters & root for them. But because we're not given their background, we think Nolan might kill them off at any moment. This avoids a common war movie mistake - while the extras die by the bushel, we know "our heroes" will either survive or die heroically in the last reel.  Nolan avoids all that.

Further, we get none of the usual war movie cliches. No big stars, no women, no false heroics, and  no demonization of the Enemy.  Unlike Saving Private Ryan, which is a 1940s war movie, with 1989 photography, Dunkirk is completely unconventional and realistic.

**Spoilers**

A good example, of Nolan's approach comes at the end. In a wonderful touch, instead of having a cliched scene of  Churchill orating "We shall fight them.." while we see Brits prepare for the upcoming battle of Britain,  Nolan has a returning solider read the speech to his mate.  It makes it the ending much more effective.

Of course the movie isn't perfect.  Like any war movie it gets things wrong.  In reality, the "little boats" weren't that important, plenty of French soldiers were taken off, and it was the bad weather and the Luftwaffe's night bombing failures that saved the BEF.  And in reality, artillery shells were hitting Dunkirk, the beach was littered with lorries and discarded equipment, and the Allied ships had plenty of AAA. It wasn't just the RAF fighting the Luftwaffe.

The movies most unrealistic scene shows some Tommies getting aboard a trawler, stranded in no-mans land, at low-tide.  The crew is gone, so how are they going to sail the boat? And why would the Germans just use it for rifle "target practice" instead of using machine guns/mortars to disable it?