Dunkirk

— I was amazed at how tense a nearly 2-hour film could be when the basic plot takes little more than a sentence to tell, but time flew by and my eyes were glued to the screen during “Dunkirk,” not because of bombs and bloodshed but because the very human emotions of the situation seemed so real. The story’s told from the perspective of a few, very normal people representative of the 400,000 Allied soldiers trapped by the German army on the beach at Dunkirk and of those trying to help them, but in a more subtle way so it isn’t a story in the American fashion with one or two swashbuckling heroes. Even the special effects are unusual—very well done but without endless blood and horror. It’s a film of long shots and close-ups with ambient sounds sometimes overpowering dialogue, depicting human triumph on a large-scale (about 300,000 people were saved) and a small scale (400,000 were specks on a beach and the more than 800 civilian boats that tried to help were specks in the ocean). If you’re not opposed to films of this genre, it’s worth your time to see. 

---

[2017. 106 min. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Fionn Whitehead Damien Bonnard, Aneurin Barnard, Mark Rylance, Barry Keoghan, Michael Fox, Tom Glynn-Carney, Tom Hardy, and Lee Armstrong.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dunkirk-2017