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Dunkirk Review

What I liked: The battle of Dunkirk is an amazing story of both strategic failing and civilian courage. I liked seeing the snapshots of soldiers on the beach, pilots, officers, and civilian boaters. The main thing this movie did well was capture the urgency and desperation of the situation. A lot of this was achieved by some pretty impressive sound engineering. If you liked the sounds in Inception (not the music part, just the BAAAAAAAM BAAAAAAAAM BAAAAAAM part) then you will love the sound effects in Dunkirk. I liked the effective building to the climax there was a palpable release of tension when the boats appear. I also liked the ending which was the Churchhill speech about "we shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds..." It was a good reminder that this is just the very beginning of a long and terrible war and that the courage and resourcefulness demonstrated in the movie is pattern that persisted throughout the rest of the war.

What I didn't:  I think we can all agree that there were more than 3 airplanes, 10 guys, and 5 boats involved in this event. We don't need to see the exact same event from a different angle separated by 30 minutes. We could just infer that something similar happened to a different boat, plane, or guy. Just because we have a few protagonists that we are following does not mean that they are the only people there. It does seem like it would have been a good idea to have some landing craft, I guess that was a design that they worked out later, but I find it hard to believe that in the history of boats no one thought that they should have barges until after D-Day. As with any well made war movie, I once again come to the solid conclusion that war is terrible and that I am very grateful that I am not in one.

Who should watch this? WWII buffs, people looking for an intense evening, people getting ready for the release of the new Winston Churchhill biopic.

Would I watch it again? I'm glad I saw it, I would need to be in the right mood to sit down and watch it again.

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