Dunkirk 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

This retelling of the true story of the Dunkirk rescue is great. I suspect this film will find itself on short lists of superior war movies in time. A very well done movie. Read more

It's a dark time in WW II and the British, along with French troops have moved to Dunkirk in hopes of being evacuated to England. The movie is set with several different story lines, one being the events befalling young British soldiers who try their best to get away on one ship. When it is sunk, they end up back at Dunkirk. Another story line follows a man and his son, along with his son's friend, depart to Dunkirk to pick up some of the soldiers on their small boat. A third line follows members of the RAF shooting down any Germans flying over the groups of private boats sailing to pick up soldier at Dunkirk. Some are shot down, while one survives long enough to shoot down an enemy flier over the beaches of Dunkirk and becomes an instant hero, even though unknown. There are times you wish the movie wouldn't move away from the story line you're on. I occasionally found that annoying but then again, the story lines are so good, I really didn't mind when all was said and done. A good movie and it made me review history for that time to learn more about what was happening in France. I do hope we don't ever have another World War again. Read more

The story telling method in Dunkirk is one of a kind and masterful. We see three converging threads in a central story. At one point all of the characters will come together but they are presented along their own timelines. The first time I saw the movie I was disoriented at first but soon grew to understand the direction the tale was head. Like the confused soldiers, airmen and civilians order came from chaos. The action sequences are truly terrifying. We see ships sinking, huge objects now wallowing in the sea, solid surfaces slipping out from beneath the feet of the men they carry. The dogfight scenes are intense. I found myself leaning in the banking planes. In Dunkirk, we rarely get a full sense of the aerial situation. We see the pilot's face more often than his view and when we see his view it is restricted, not some godlike sense of what is happening. Only on occasion do the camera's pull back and give us an idea of the over situation. Tension builds in most scenes and the way the story is cut together it builds and builds until the moment when the characters come together. Dunkirk is a story of a victory within a defeat. It is not an attempt to be a historical documentary. It is an amalgam of experiences and accounts assembled into a telling that allows you to enter the world of those who lived it. If you want to understand history, movies are not the place to look since that is not their purpose. I was entertained by this movie. Watching is a second time at home I felt the tension and emotions that welled up when I saw this in the theater. Read more

This was a good movie. I had never heard of Dunkirk before, so some movies can be a gateway to diving deeper into history. I don't know how accurate this film is. The cinematography was splendid and the action sequences held my interest, which is rare considering that I tend to find war films boring, but this one wasn't boring. There were some mild negatives or cons. One of them is that as I was watching this I thought, "Wow they really didn't develop the characters much." There isn't much in the way of character development, which can make it difficult for some to gain any interest when they're not being pulled in by any one character. Maybe that was purposely done, I don't know. Tom Hardy and Kenneth Branagh may be the biggest known names in this, but they're so hardly in this that I wonder why they agreed to it in the first place. I had heard that Tom Hardy turned it down, but Christopher Nolan who wrote and directed this had worked with him before in "Inception" and "The Dark Knight". And that Christopher practically had to beg Tom to do this. I'm still not sure why he begged him to do a role that anyone could do. Tom flies a plane the entire film with a helmet and mask on. You don't even see his face until the end for about fifteen seconds. My guess is that having Tom's name attached to this on the marquee would draw in more of an audience. As it stands, I had never heard of this film until the DVD popped up in my recommendations and I bought it because it was the price of a rental. It was worth it and entertaining aside from those mild complaints. I did recognize that actor that was the scarecrow in the dark knight, and some guy that kind of looked a bit like that Harry Styles, who turned out to be him as I noticed in the credits. The other is I do wish there was a bit more story as I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, except for knowing that the British and the French had aligned together in a war where Germany was their enemy. The English and French get stranded on a beach in Dunkirk awaiting to be rescued before the Germans find and kill them. They have to cross the ocean which lends for some spectacular visuals and fight scenes. Read more