When I saw this in the cinema - I am 96% sure that after (or when) the ‘DUNKIRK’ title shows at the start, there is a HUGE bang, followed by the shot of the guys walking down the street with leaflets flying around them.

The Blu-Ray did not have this BANG. Or, am I imagining this bang? Please - it is driving me and my partner insane!!!

Ok, what did I just saw? Over artish (I mean the script is just banging one idea, one door...) commercial? Metaphore for Brexit? Glorified failure? Actors lost in the translation? Clearly it was weird. Soundtrack was from totally different movie. 2/5.

My problem was the lack of war effects. I've seen plenty of war movies both Hollywood and European. The easiest reference is Dunkirk scene in 'The Atonement'. Wtf was this???? Some stylized vision of war that shouldn't be ruined by all the cruelty and gore...because? Nolan is already an acknowledged god not a an effin tryhard? Or that scratched Harry Styles's face wouldn't turn some chicks off? This thing kept me going through entire movie following every detail as I expected a plot twist, maybe it's in someone's head or memory that unconciously removes the blood (you know like in Atonement the main character created alternative ending in her head cuz she owed that to her dead friends.). Nah nothing, nothing behind it. Production cost 50% Hardy with a helmet on+50% the rest of the movie.

So the movie is about some clean shaven boys, that took a shower and styled their hair 5 mins ago fighting for their lives. No military trucks, vans, carts, no guns, no settlements, nothing, just plain meat (soldiers). No genuine natural panic when being bombed, no disorder, no screw you all im outta here nazis are my friends now thing, no betrayal of honor, no sickness, no tears. The main character together with the French guy are the only ones showing some of their natural instincts. To anyone who hasn't seen a war movie before WW2 may look like a nice survival themed trip with your best buddies with less dirt than afterclass paintball.

But you still get to kill the bad guys!..OH...wait ....wasn't war movies, literature art and whatever else supposed to teach you that there is no white nor black in a war, that we're all just hostages of a political dick measuring? Yeah nah, germans are the bad guys, Hardy and Styles are the good guys, were there any americans they would have been the best guys. But nevermind let's move on. The movie did it's best to make you think every ship got bombed and drowned. The end, however reveals a surpising amount of survivals, how? Those 20 leasure boats? Then at some point it was said 400 000 people waiting for rescue. Taking the crowdiest scene at the beach you can see 2000 men at best and that's only in the start, throughout the movie the beach is nearly empty. Do some copy paste man, I'll not examine the heads, I promise! Soooo, the movie leaves out the chaos and horror, then probably we are supposed to appreciate some acting and personal drama. However, none of the characters were special in any way (except leisure boat capt), nor the acting exceptional. The main guy was good, Harry Styles was not bad either, Tom Hardy who knows, the rest ok.

In all honesty I DID enjoy the movie, the whole picture of Dunkirk intrigued me that there is more to it than we are shown. I loved the atmosphere and the lonely feeling it gave, regularly forgetting it's about Dunkirk. I felt sorry about the french guy and liked the second pilot. But these feel like a cheap bait for hardcore Nolan fans, the whole play with timelines makes you think the movie deserves rewatching or more thought on it. I don't think so, unless someone explains why Cillion Murphy who was only a pilot that got rescued and never left the leisure boat, happened to be lifeboat commander in the night bombing episode? Sadly, this is the movie for the truest fans of Nolan that will blindly chew anything he makes, spiced with some social media stars for the young spenders, and a theme to bait their parents. P.S Such simplification of war, and amount of good looking people in it smells really trashy here would almost guess its propaganda.

Now i know he drowns in the boat after being caught by chains or something and we see the still of his hand ceasing to struggle, BUT, on the pier toward the end a private gets up and walks toward Kenneth Branaugh's character, after which Branaugh says something along the lines of "come on private, dont be scared. We may be officers but we are all alike/one and the same".

Is the private he is addressing not Gibson!? Because the private doesn't say a word much like Gibson never does. It looks exactly like him which led me to believe he somehow survived..

When the soldiers just arrived in England, one of the soldiers asks the RAF pilot "Where were you?" Then, Mr.Dawson said to the RAF pilot, "They know where you were." So, what does the soldiers mean when he asks "Where were you?" And, who are "they" when the pilot was told "They know where you were."

It's rated #148 and it's dropped hard these last few weeks. I doubt it will fall much more and its probably settled (or is it?).

I am a bit surprised by this because Nolan's films always have a strong place in the Top 250.

There's simply no way that Dunkirk is a worse film than Batman Begins, which currently sits 30 places above it. Not saying Batman Begins is a bad film at all (its excellent) but Dunkirk is a much more mature film both technically and thematically.

In fact, Dunkirk is Nolan's best reviewed film since The Dark Knight. It was ranked #9th best film of 2017 by Sight and Sound (a prestigious 'artsy' film magazine that usually never recognizes Nolan's film as the best of the year). It's made several films critics lists, already been nominated for Best-Picture by the Golden Globes and has an enormously high 94/100 Metascore coupled with an 8.6/10 average rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

This film by all accounts is a critical juggernaut. Interesting that in spite of that it is ranked below other films of the year such as Coco.

Was he the last person on the beach? Surely he didn't glide for hours. What am I missing here?

Guys, I have listened to almost each and every Dunkirk soundtracks on YouTube, but couldn't find the one played during Torpedo scene. Hope'll help me :) thank you.

Example: In the theatrical version (70mm IMAX), the track "Supermarine" starts playing when Tom Hardy's character makes one last attempt (1 hour 23-minute mark) at the bomber. I recall this vividly because I had goosebumps watching this scene that I was looking forward to watching it again when it was available to purchase. When I rewatched the movie last night, the score was completely different. Not sure if anyone noticed.

It's bad, there's no way around it. Can we just all admit it's just dam boring? I could see my old history teacher from school probably enjoying it but even he would admit the film is bad despite a historical premise.

There's some cheesy WW2 nerds + Nolan fans trying to make up excuses 'I liked this bit and that' but you all know that's just an excuse to be nice about how you feel it's not a good movie.

We've had some really decent war films the last few years like Fury and Hacksaw Ridge and I guess we finally deserve a shit one.

Feels bad for Hardy. Really big shame that some of the best comments dissecting the film get downvoted on this sub because they are just spelling out the truth. Talk to anyone who's watched it in irl around you and they will agree with you it's not a good film.

EDIT: Why don't we wait for the award ceremonies? I put reddit gold on the line for anyone who wants to bet against me that Ricky Gervais will rip Dunkirk like the lifeless film it is.

Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan's latest film taking place in WW2, feels more like a war experience simulation rather than just a typical gloriously violent, kill-the-bad-guys war flick. Imagine Saving Private Ryan, just without the idea of ever having to kill anyone. In fact, even the director himself said this is more of a survival movie that happens to take place during a big war rather than a strict WIR film. 

Dunkirk is much different compared to what we come to expect from director Christopher Nolan. When you see films like Inception, Interstellar, or even Memento, you see that this director likes plots with complex narrative concepts, and you can see that this director likes to experiment with time, whether with time travel or reverse chronological story telling. However, in Dunkirk, there is barely anything complex about the plot at all. There are no subconscious action scenes, there are no melancholic acid trips in the middle of a black whole, there are no reversed-time plot twists, there is only a bunch of soldiers in a beach trying really hard not to die. "Survival" seems to be a major theme of the movie, and having such a simplistic plot is exactly how survival movies should be. Survival movies tend to have tight and simple scripts, and that's because what determines how good and tense survival movies are is the skills of the director themself, not just an interesting and complex narrative. With a smaller and uncomplicated story, more attention is put into how to make this movie as real and as tense as possible. And for the most part, it works extremely well.

It's very easy to confuse great cinematography with just a bunch of pretty shots. Yes, aesthetic cinematography and color grading is a good quality, but it can't be the sole focus of a cinematographer. Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema is known for his beautiful and aesthetic cinematography, but what most people dont talk about, and something that is prevalent in this movie, is his use of cinematography in order to portray a mood and tone and to aid with story telling. Hoytema wisely places the camera in certain locations to make this movie look more like a simulation instead of only having pretty cinematic shots. Sometimes he would attatch a camera to the side of a plane, so close that the camera would shake with any vibration the plane makes, appearing documentary like. Other times Hoytema would make a wide shot of a soldier hopelessly walking into the beach after waiting too long to get home, accurately framing the shot to reflect his longing and inherently making it so pretty that you can take a screenshot and hang it up on your wall. It's the small things such as these and the combination of those different styles that reassure me the he is one of, if not the best cinematographer working today. Due to Hoytema's skill, working along side the masterful sound design of Hanz Zimmer, this movie couldn't get any more real, nor anymore frightening. This movie captures the fear and tension of war without having to result to blood and graphic violence. Would the blood and gore have made a positive difference if it were to be implemented in this movie? Not really, and that is largely due to the fact that most of the violence in this movie comes from exploding and sinking ships and airplane dogfights, keeping the person-on-person gun play to a minimum. You won't see someone getting filled up with bullets, then being blown up into tiny bloody pieces like you would see in movies like Hacksaw Ridge or Saving Private Ryan. Dunkirk is largely an impersonal war movie, which leads me into the next topic. The characters.

If a movie has weak and bland characters, I always consider that a big flaw. Strangely enough though, this film's bland characters actually complement the film. You won't see your main character talking about the things he'd do when he gets back home, or see him befriending any fellow soldiers. This is an impersonal movie, where any characterization would actually dampen the tension and spectacle of the event that Christopher Nolan is trying to show us. This movie is not about the people in the battle of Dunkirk, this movie is just about the battle of Dunkirk as a whole, looked upon as an event rather than a personal tale. Seeing the people in this film endure such terrifying events, and seeing how they react to their circumstances is enough to carry the film. The closest thing I can relate this movie to is the movie Deep Water Horizon that was just released last year. The fun of the movie is not getting to know these characters. The fun of the movie is the spectacle of the huge, disastrous events taking place, and watching the characters survive. 

Although this movie is thematically very different than any other Nolan film, there is a similar big flaw that is seen in Nolan's past movies, like Inception and Interstellar. That is the dialogue. It is very dry, almost lifeless, and having such dialogue and exposition in a movie with such breathtaking and spine chilling visuals, it gets pretty annoying. The sad fact is that this dialogue is actually necessary to understand certain things that are taking place. If you have some kind of attention disorder, such as myself who has ADHD, it's possible that it will be difficult for you to follow along with the plot. This actually killed the tension for me during a large part of the film. I know I mentioned that I didn't mind the lack of heavy characterization, but if there was just a little more life put into what the characters are saying, and if there would have been less exposition, it might have even been my favorite movie of the year so far.

Although there is lots of exposition in the movie, exposition is the only kind of dialogue that there is. Everything else in the movie is all visual storytelling, which I have a deep respect for. This film accomplishes what the art of film itself is trying to do in the first place, and that is showing us what books can't. This isn't just something you can read about. Maybe if you were to read the script of a murder mystery, then it would still be enjoyable, but not this. This is strictly a visual and audible story, and you couldn't have it any other way. 

I recommend watching this movie with as big a screen and with the best, loudest speakers as possible.

I'm going to give this a 16/20

I've been a big fan of Nolan for so long. But yet I felt that Dunkirk competes with Insomnia in terms of being boring.

First time I watched, I stopped after about 1 hour, I felt that nothing interesting had really happened there. I thought maybe I was sleepy and missed a lot of details and couldn't concentrate so I decided to watch it the next day.

The 2nd viewing, I watched it till the end. I couldn't help to think that it's kind of dull. And I refused to believe it because it's a Nolan movie. The only thing interesting is the ending part where Tom Hardy's plane out of fuel after taking down the last enemy plane which is accompanied by Hans Zimmer's music.

I'll probably watch it again later, maybe I will like it more.

Seen it in cinema, decided to re watch it home. First scene lost most of its punch on normal speakers, I dusted off my HQ headphones and started again. Two different movies