Let me say I really wanted to like this film. I avoided seeing the previews or any reviews so I could go in unbiased which is how I like to see all of my movies. I don't like to rubbish the hard work that people put into their films because I enjoy really well made films. But in short I really wish someone told me to avoid this one. I'm not one to follow the flow and praise something that is clearly so very bad.
The bad: The music\noise\soundtrack...whatever you want to call it was terrible. Just random esculations of horned instruments that build up and up and up to nothing. It was way too distracting and completely failed to build the suspense. I found myself looking around the cinema at the speakers wondering when the projectionist was going to realise he had accidentally turned the sound up too loud for the movie.
There is zero character analysis. Everyone looks the same and you cant distinguish anyone from anyone else throughout the film. It doesn't matter anyway because you don't have any reason to care about anyone in particular because there is no back story of anyone. The plot is flat dry and boring. Don't get me wrong it was based on an important event in history but this film does this no justice at all.
My biggest gripe is the lack of dialogue throughout the film. Was Nolan trying something new here? Probably but please don't do it again. There are shots of what are meant to be hundreds of thousands of soldiers all standing in lines on the beach all deathly quiet staring out to the ocean in most scenes. Even the terribly injured lying on stretchers are mutes.
So many scenes don't add any value and don't make any sense. The stupidity of trying to force a single 60kg soldier off a sinking ship to reduce the overall weight of a boat stuck on the sand? I mean really...who writes this stuff. The boat is taking on hundreds of litres of water and you want us to believe that one person will magically raise the boat off the beach? It's a head shaking moment that just makes no sense at all.
The whole thing is a b grade made for TV matinée crossed with the overly long 50 yard stares reminisce of a bad episode of the days our lives. The Dad in the boat couldn't care less that his son dies. He almost seems content. The plane scenes are slow and boring. They show little tactics and make us believe the entire German airforce was fought off by 3 spitfires. And don't get me started on the spitfire that somehow manages to linger in the air long after its engine has stopped for what seems like an eternity. Some say that Spitfire is still flying around without any fuel to this day. As my mate said, he didn't have to land on the beach, he could have flown all the way back to London.
I heard the budget was 150 million. That's got to be a joke. There is just no way. Either that or the majority of the scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. You certainly didn't have to pay your actors for speaking roles.
It's such a shame. This movie has so little going for it. Maybe the editor was coming down off a week long coke bender when he put this together because I have no doubt I could have done better with the raw footage and a PC version of Adode Premier.
Wait for DVD release and a night when you are not really into watching a movie to pop this one in. You wont miss the atmosphere of a cinema for this movie because there is none to talk of. I apologise for being so harsh but I would prefer an apology from the director for killing my expectations. 3/10 is very generous indeed.
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