Three words for Dunkirk: intense, thrilling and inspiring. It’s a gritty war film revolving around the real-life incident from World War II, where soldiers from the Allied Forces are holed up in Dunkirk, a French port town. The fate of these soldiers seems doomed in that region of war-torn beach and harbour, as the Nazis seemingly close up on them and despite being told that ‘help is on its way,’ the Allied troops found little hope in that as the only way out was through the sea-route but Germans had air superiority which they were taking full advantage of. What little opposition they faced was immediately extinguished by bombing it.
This tale of Death, Blood and Bravery has been told through one of the many soldiers stuck in that dire situation as out of ultimate desperation, Britain finally sends civilian boats to rescue its brave men.
What ensues next is a horrific war, realistic and intense in nature. There is heavy bombing and relentless shooting, planes crashing into the ocean and unlucky ships getting hit and drowning — Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk’s director employs every subtle trick in the book to make sure that the audiences can fully relate to the ordeal faced by those brave men of the Britain as they fight against fate to make it out of Dunkirk alive, without making the visuals in the movie too gory to watch. Despite the heavy numbers of death, one will witness very less blood (and we are thankful for it).
One would not even come across long periods of meaningful dialogues exchanged between the protagonists of the movie as Nolan has relied on the strength of his movie’s visuals instead to evoke feelings in the audiences. They are sharp, well-executed and seem authentic.
Dunkirk, a story of death and danger, also sends out a message that ‘not every hero wears a cape’. That is referring to those civilians, the everyday ordinary heroes, who came to help Allied troops evacuate Dunkirk on their civilian boats despite the very real possibility of losing their own lives in the process of saving those soldiers.
All in all, we’d give Dunkirk a 4.5 on 5 — as it’s only lacking slightly in the dialogue delivery department and also during war moments, it became almost hard to identify which side was which as those moments appeared to be bleary — full of confusion, owing to loud blasts and planes hovering above. But then again, it could have been Nolan’s another trick to depict how intense real war can be.
So watch it, folks! A really well-executed movie on war like this doesn’t come out very often, and we are grateful for this one.
Siddy Says Rating: 4.5/5
Written By Nida Haqqi
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