Firstly, i want to say i enjoyed the film, nothing amazing like the critics and Christopher Nolan fans have made out but i think he achieved what he set out to do, with all the parameters he set himself regards to the differences with actual Dunkirk history and the filmmaking style he wanted to use.
It certainly isn't one of the greatest war films ever made, far from it but it is a decent experiment in filmmaking, if your into that kind of thing.
Me and my friend both thought it was like a good film you watch at home on a Sunday afternoon. And having watched it on the big screen i would say that thats the best way to fully enjoy it too, at home, which i would rather have seen it at. You'll understand when you see it, its just one of those films.
If you watch this in Imax like i did, make sure you take a tissue because the sound becomes unbearably loud after a little while and you may need to plug your ears up, especially when the aircraft segments start and with the bigger explosions abit later on. Even with tissues in ears its pretty loud too but its nicely bearable.
So if you do go and watch it at the cinema then i wholeheartedly recommend watching it in the standard 2D screens, mainly because of the unbearably loud volume and bassy sounds in Imax, mixed with the other film soundtrack noises makes everything sound muffled. And also because it isn't such the big visual spectacle as they've lead us to believe. Nolans previous films and those of say Ridley Scott or Peter Jackson have given more scope and reason to watch their films in an Imax screen.
Overall though, i found the film enjoyable, JUST above average. It plods along nicely for a 95 minute feature, with 10 minutes of end credits also. There isn't a dull moment in this from my perspective. Nolan does make you feel sorry for the characters he wants you to feel sorry for, but for a war film it isn't a greatly emotional one. I don't understand why its been given such high ratings as the visuals, sound, story, character development and overall feel don't warrant such grand praise. I can understand why half the audience have really disliked it for the above reasons also, as there was no storyline and there's barely a character for the audience to attach themselves to. Plus there's a lot of difference in regards to the sheer numbers of aircraft's, boats and people not present here. I did feel the grandness of the peril these boys were actually in really missing because of this scaling down from Nolan, which was his conscious choice to leave out. I have to admit that adding CGI here and there really would have given this moment of history a more realistic vision of it's devastating scale.
I expected to see really amazing choreographed air combat sequences too but they were just OK, they did the job but nothing spectacular or exciting. There have been way better and breathtaking aircraft combat scenes from most other films, war or sci-fi!
If you didn't know Christopher Nolan's intentions in his film as i've briefly alluded to above and are expecting to see an epic masterpiece of a war movie in the vein of films by directors like Stanley Kubrick, Michael Cimino, Brian De Palma, Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg or Mel Gibson, where the visuals mesh breathtakingly with story, characters and emotions then you may be disappointed with Dunkirk. Dunkirk feels more like a brief and confined moment of an evacuation, with small scale pockets of peril at its heart, and knowing that will help you appreciate this better, hopefully, but by how much i don't know, for me its a 6/10, just above average.
It's definitely not on the scale the critics and fanboys have sold it on, for a general audience! Even though i enjoyed it i still don't see how such high ratings are being thrown at this. And its a shame the film doesn't convey the epic grand scale feeling of terror that history has told us.
It certainly isn't one of the greatest war films ever made, far from it but it is a decent experiment in filmmaking, if your into that kind of thing.
Me and my friend both thought it was like a good film you watch at home on a Sunday afternoon. And having watched it on the big screen i would say that thats the best way to fully enjoy it too, at home, which i would rather have seen it at. You'll understand when you see it, its just one of those films.
If you watch this in Imax like i did, make sure you take a tissue because the sound becomes unbearably loud after a little while and you may need to plug your ears up, especially when the aircraft segments start and with the bigger explosions abit later on. Even with tissues in ears its pretty loud too but its nicely bearable.
So if you do go and watch it at the cinema then i wholeheartedly recommend watching it in the standard 2D screens, mainly because of the unbearably loud volume and bassy sounds in Imax, mixed with the other film soundtrack noises makes everything sound muffled. And also because it isn't such the big visual spectacle as they've lead us to believe. Nolans previous films and those of say Ridley Scott or Peter Jackson have given more scope and reason to watch their films in an Imax screen.
Overall though, i found the film enjoyable, JUST above average. It plods along nicely for a 95 minute feature, with 10 minutes of end credits also. There isn't a dull moment in this from my perspective. Nolan does make you feel sorry for the characters he wants you to feel sorry for, but for a war film it isn't a greatly emotional one. I don't understand why its been given such high ratings as the visuals, sound, story, character development and overall feel don't warrant such grand praise. I can understand why half the audience have really disliked it for the above reasons also, as there was no storyline and there's barely a character for the audience to attach themselves to. Plus there's a lot of difference in regards to the sheer numbers of aircraft's, boats and people not present here. I did feel the grandness of the peril these boys were actually in really missing because of this scaling down from Nolan, which was his conscious choice to leave out. I have to admit that adding CGI here and there really would have given this moment of history a more realistic vision of it's devastating scale.
I expected to see really amazing choreographed air combat sequences too but they were just OK, they did the job but nothing spectacular or exciting. There have been way better and breathtaking aircraft combat scenes from most other films, war or sci-fi!
If you didn't know Christopher Nolan's intentions in his film as i've briefly alluded to above and are expecting to see an epic masterpiece of a war movie in the vein of films by directors like Stanley Kubrick, Michael Cimino, Brian De Palma, Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg or Mel Gibson, where the visuals mesh breathtakingly with story, characters and emotions then you may be disappointed with Dunkirk. Dunkirk feels more like a brief and confined moment of an evacuation, with small scale pockets of peril at its heart, and knowing that will help you appreciate this better, hopefully, but by how much i don't know, for me its a 6/10, just above average.
It's definitely not on the scale the critics and fanboys have sold it on, for a general audience! Even though i enjoyed it i still don't see how such high ratings are being thrown at this. And its a shame the film doesn't convey the epic grand scale feeling of terror that history has told us.