by Primarch on Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:33 am
I saw Dunkirk today along with Yellowstreak.
I have to say that I loved every second of it. The film was absolutely unrelenting. Even in the quiet seconds you were waiting for something to happen, and it did. The pacing was spot on, I didn't take my eyes off the screen throughout the film. The film very cleverly interweaves three separate, yet connected time frames during the evacuation. The scenes on the beaches of Dunkirk cover a period of a week, for the crew of the small ships sent to rescue the troops the movie covers one day. Finally for the RAF pilots covering the evacuation, the whole affair is only one hour. As your view switches between the different locales, you'll see the same event happening from different viewpoints. At one stage early in the film, the RAF engage a bomber, about an hour later you see the same dogfight from the point of view of one of the ships' crew.
There isn't a whole lot of dialogue in the film, most of the time you're listening to engines roaring, the scream of divebombers as they unleash their payloads on the men below, or the sounds of panic as men try to escape a sinking ship. The music keeps the tension up, with a steady tick, tick, tick of a clock in the lulls between orchestra pieces. Whether that clock is counting down the seconds to salvation or the last few seconds of someone's life is really up to the viewer.
The cast are all brilliant (unless, as Ashmie does, you dislike a particular actor). I'm not Tom Hardy's biggest fan, but he puts his "glaring-eyes-and-hidden-mouth" acting experience to good use as the fighter pilot covering the evacuation. Beyond some aircraft you don't really see the Germans, the enemy is out there somewhere, but their presence as an invisible yet ever present threat works very well.
Overall I'd give this movie a very positive review. It is a great piece of cinema. Anyone expecting Harry Styles to run around shooting Nazis will be somewhat disappointed though. It is very much the story of an event rather than the story of any of the characters. Having watched it in IMAX, the whole world seemed a lot quieter and muted when I left the theatre.
Go and see it if you haven't already.
Prims Painty Points > +924.5
Finished Minis in 2014: 510.....Finished Minis in 2015: 300
Finished Minis in 2016 (as of Nov 30): 369 + 2 Tables of Terrain