By Steve CrumDunkirk is a nail-biting, spectacular recreation of WWII’s desperate evacuation of hundreds of thousands of British, French, Belgium and Canadian soldiers fleeing the Nazis at a decisive battle in 1940. The action takes place in the concluding 10 days of the tragic event, May 26-June 4, 1940.
The brilliant Christopher Nolan, who directed, produced and co-wrote Dunkirk, has made the unreal and surreal seem real in such films as Memento, Inception, Interstellar and The Dark Knight. Now he succeeds at the daunting task of making a historic event seem vividly real through large scale WWII battle sequences. In Dunkirk, Nolan’s genius is equally adept at focusing on one-to-one human relationships. His films are heralded as Christopher Nolan films, box office magnets. While Dunkirk is not destined as a traditional summer blockbuster, it is nonetheless a must-see for its historical and artistic worth.
Be aware that Dunkirk proceeds with sparse dialogue and no narration.
Taking place a little more than a year before The United States entered the war, the fact-based story opens in Dunkirk, France. Allied forces had been battling the Germans since the first of May, 1940. But the tide had turned in favor of the Nazis with the Allies suffering numerous casualties. Overwhelmed, a massive number of troops were driven to the beach awaiting ships to transport them a mere 26 miles over the English Channel to safety on Great Britain’s mainland. 
As Nolan’s film shows, the evacuation was fraught with problems compounded by frequent airplane attacks along the shoreline and on evacuation ships themselves. No sooner did a packed rescue ship set sail that German bombs fell and airplane machine guns blazed. Adding to the challenge was that few ships were available for the rescue, and few could not make it due to the Channel’s shallow waterline.
The military needed immediate help, so hundreds of civilian fishing and pleasure boats were sequestered to bring supplies from England to Dunkirk, and to transport as many soldiers as possible to safety. The smaller boats were unaffected by the Channel’s depth. So much for your mini-history lesson. Nolan’s film will clarify everything. However, because of the united military and civilian effort, 360,000 troops were eventually rescued. 
There is no main star in Dunkirk, but there are a couple of well known actors. Kenneth Branagh portrays the stoic Commander Bolton, the highest ranking Allied officer at Dunkirk. Mark Rylance is terrific as Mr. Dawson, a patriotic civilian mariner who captains one of the rescue boats. Noteworthy are young actors Fionn Whitehead, Cillian Murphy, and Tom Hardy. Nolan has chosen to tell Dunkirk’s story from three aspects—land, sea and air—and he keeps the tension going with separate story lines from one location to another, paced by Lee Smith’s Oscar caliber editing.
Important to the film’s success is Hans Zimmer’s unique score, which becomes a living entity unto itself due to pulsating sounds. For example, during the aerial combat sequences, Zimmer’s music echoes the pilot’s heartbeat as well as his rapid breathing. Music = a sound effect. Oftentimes, the music has a metronome, countdown effect. The clock ticks as rescue time runs out.
A real treat is to see gorgeous recreations of original WWII airplanes in dogfights. Christopher Nolan says he tried to keep the CGI to a minimum and use actual airplanes and ships.
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One might expect the running time for a picture of this magnitude to be around three hours. Dunkirk is only 106 minutes long.
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GRADE on an A-F Scale: A-