It's a good film but I still prefer Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Memento, and Prestige. This would crack the top 5. So far Nolan is batting 500. The Dark Knight Rises is his weakest film and that film is still very entertaining for the first 2 hours. It doesn't really fall apart until that last half hour.

@Heisenberg12 said:

"TDK: A- (B- without Heath)"

So does this mean that I can rate Scarface without Pacino, Heat without Deniro and Pacino, Good Will Hunting without Damon and Affleck, for you Inception without DiCaprio...etc...(for example).

No. It simply means that it was the Heath show. It is only "good" because of him. Subtract him and it is a severely flawed "OK" movie. My parenthetic score was to indicate that it was really all about him. All the parts that lacked Joker or Two Face were close to the level of stupid present in TDKR.

Just my opinion.

@Heisenberg12 said:

After watching Logan, terribly overhyped fantasy supernatural comic crappie, Dunkirk stands out like a work of gold. Maybe that's why I liked it so much, too. I think the movie you see before a movie affects how you see it.

I'm just so glad and refreshed a blockbuster came out this summer that wasn't fantasy comic books or reboots, remakes, trilogies, sequels. That alone wins Dunkirk an extra star.

I think a lot of the haters of this movie are comic book and fantasy Sci fi brainwashed film goers who if Transformers or Darth Vader don't show up, they get disappointed.

Relax, snowflake.

I've never been a fan of Nolan's work, but since I've always been a WWII buff, I wanted to see this film. And I liked it quite a bit, but I think that's because I came into the film with knowledge of the real event. There didn't seem to be enough exposition to explain to newcomers what they were watching. Had I known nothing of the event, I probably would have been confused and perhaps bored. So, in that case, it was lazy filmmaking (which seems to be the standard these days--let the audience fill in the blanks on their own) but the film looked great.

Overall, the only Nolan film I like so far.

I think it's better than all of Nolan's batman movies... I'm glad he's not wasting away in comicbook ghetto the way Snyder has been... 😉

Seriously though, I liked that he cut back so severly on the exposition... In that way it was a significant departure from Interstellar and Inception (both of which i liked)... I suppose the fairly well defined setting helped...

The lack of dialogue really does help you be there and immerses you in the situation without having to take too subjective a point of view or to relate to the characters apart from them being human beings... You don't recognise yourself in these kids, soldiers, pilots and fathers, rather you recognise their humanity... flaws and all...

Pretty good for what is still effectively a blockbuster... We'll see how the next couple of months of dramas will measure up...

Nolan did so well w/ Interstellar. An engaging and emotional film, even if one must suspend quite a lot of disbelief.

Dunkirk by contrast is forgettable and emotionless, right down to a father who behaves as if losing one of his children after a violent outburst from a shell-shocked sailor is no worse than getting a dab of mustard on his tie.

Dunkirk the historical event was incredibly important...if those hundreds of thousands of British troops aren't rescued from certain death and/or imprisonment, my Lord would history be changed for the worst for all of us. We are shown NOTHING in this film that brings the desperate reality to life. For anyone not familiar w/ history, they'll get the impression this was just "some guys getting rescued."

Nolan doesn't help a bit by breaking events into different perspectives, each w/ it's own self-important trailer. Okay, surely Dunkirk wasn't just about troops being removed from the beach...but why not just show different perspectives from time to time, vs. telling a story as if only these four events were what took place?

We never learn WHEN the movie takes place. The beginning of the evacuation? The middle, near the end when Germans were approaching closer and closer? We're shown the same ship pitching over (or was it several ships) (or was it just an hallucination?) Who knows, perhaps those two deserters pretending to be stretcher-bearers can clue us in, the dolts who're meant to somehow be heroes in all of this.

Not one actor stands out in this, although several do for the wrong reasons. What's the opposite of hamming it up; Mark Rylance does a great job showing us the antonym of that acting undesirable quality.

I'm no fan of Nolan's Batman flicks, nor of his wildly over-rated Inception. But compared to even those popcorn flicks, Dunkirk is a shallow wreck of a film. Joe Wright directed an amazing Dunkirk scene for Atonement which was fantastic and mesmerizing. This film offers nothing akin to the scope and grandeur of what Wright gave audiences. Nolan needs to go back to fictional films, pronto.