Dunkirk

It took me forever to come to grips with my feelings over Christopher Nolan’s latest offering to the public as he’s had a pretty strong track record over the past two decades. I mean, outside of his ridiculous decision to make Bane sound like Sean Connery on life support in Batman 3, he’s been pretty much on point with his storytelling, his direction, and his ability to move me emotionally. But it’s because he’s been so good at what he does it makes us slow to point out his epic failures whenever we encounter them.

It’s similar to when U2 was on top of the world; when they released War and The Joshua Tree it seemed as if they could do no wrong, that was until records like Zooropa and Pop came around, both of which were clear signs that they had fallen off the whiskey covered throne they had built for themselves. Yet people still flooded to their shows as if their ears hadn’t just been exposed to the Irish equivalent of Gerardo. Rico…Suave! I remember people saying this about that stupid song Stay (Faraway, So Close!) "It’s like, full of emotion and shit" Ok, so I may have made that last part up but I’m sure someone’s stoned uncle probably said that at some point.

The point is, there are ton of people out there who are grasping for straws in an attempt to convince themselves that Dunkirk is actually a good movie. I’ve heard people say things like "Well, you have to pay the $18 to see it in IMAX to truly get crushed physically and emotionally" or "You know what, Harry Styles wasn’t all that bad in it! He wasn’t distracting at all!" Ok, the mere fact that some terrible Brit pop star didn’t distract you from the story should tell you all you need to know about the quality of said story, especially considering the fact that he had the majority of the lines. I love Bobby Brown but the fact that I didn’t think he was the most ridiculous thing I saw on screen during Ghostbusters 2 let me know that it was probably time to put that franchise to bed.

Now don’t get me wrong, technically Dunkirk is a brilliant film as the sound, the always present but minimalist approach to the score, and the actual filming are all on point; and I’m certain that if I paid $18 to see it in true IMAX I’d be even more impressed. That however won’t make me care about anything that’s happening to the people on screen. You never really get to know anyone’s name, outside of some scrubby kid who gets punked after being on screen for like 5 minutes, and everyone seemingly only cares about themselves. And yes, I’m well aware of the fact that this is by design to show that war doesn’t really care who you are when it comes to deciding who suffers or dies. And yes, I get that when your survival instincts kick in, you naturally do whatever it takes to live (the creepy old lady in Minority report taught me that with her weird, biting plants). But if this is a story about scrubs on a beach getting rescued then you should set it up to where you actually care about the scrubs who are being rescued.

The film’s climax fell unbelievably flat mainly because the only character you could find any type of connection with was the shell shocked, desperate, and stranded soldier played by Cillian Murphy. Maybe as an American I’ve been brainwashed by all of our war propaganda films but it seems to me that if you have 40,000 soldiers on the coast of France and Germany is coming for you, you’d be able to come up with some sort of strategy to at least fight back! Yes, Germany had tanks and artillery, and all the British and French soldiers had available to them were rifles, but haven’t these people ever read the Bible or watched the movie Braveheart? There wasn’t one British general who was smarter than freaking William Wallace?

Hell, at the least come up with something better than just duck and cover when planes are dropping bombs on you. You have thousands of rifles, you couldn’t all simultaneously shoot at the plane? It may not have blown it up but it would have at least slowed it down a bit. Just do something! Man the f%&* up and fight! And you wonder why America won its independence and stole Louisiana from you!

Now was this movie all bad? No. The dogfighting scenes were cool and seemingly more realistic than anything we saw in the terrible but awesome The Last Starfighter. And the claustrophobic scene in the grounded boat where they are hiding from Germans who are using the boat for target practice was cool but 20 minutes does not make a movie. In the end, I guess it’s ok that Nolan wasn’t able to deliver on this film as he’s still batting .900 but let’s just admit that this movie sucks and move on with our lives. I give Dunkirk a rating of WEAK!