★★☆☆☆
Criminally under-represented in the annals of movie history, the wartime evacuation of Dunkirk has been crying out for a classic film interpretation to rank alongside genre leaders The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far and Saving Private Ryan.
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, alas, just isn’t it. What it is, essentially, is 106 clamorous minutes of big-screen bombast that’s so concerned with its own spectacle and scale (shot on huge IMAX and 65mm cameras, for big frames and big action) that it neglects to deliver the most crucial element — drama.
And by “drama” I don’t mean actual physical momentum, or high-tension countdowns. The film has a tonne of those. It bounces manically between three nominal protagonists, all of whom are up against the clock (a loud tick-tocky soundtrack underscores the point).
The newcomer Fionn Whitehead is the luckless every-soldier Tommy (yep, Tommy, we get it) whom we follow on to the beaches of Dunkirk in the summer of 1940, and who, from then on, is basically flung from one sinking boat to another (three in total) with all the wordless enthusiasm of an It’s a Knockout contestant. Then there’s the RAF automaton Farrier, played by Tom Hardy’s eyeballs (Hardy’s face is mostly hidden by a pilot’s mask, although he does get to deliver hackneyed fighter-pilot corkers such as, “I’m on that one, you take this one!”). Farrier is running out of fuel, but he’s got a job to do, damn it!
Finally there’s old Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance), the closest thing the film has to an actual character. Dawson is a kindly pleasure-boater who has picked up a shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy) on the way to join the flotilla of civilian rescue boats (aka The Little Ships of Dunkirk).
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There are other players too, including Kenneth Branagh as a navy commander and the One Direction pop star Harry Styles (acquitting himself ably) as one of Tommy’s punchy peers. But mostly they get lost in the noise.
And there is a lot of noise. The cacophonous score by Hans Zimmer can best be described as an express train full of cutlery crashing into an explosives factory. It provides an extra layer of sensory chaos to a film that appears to abdicate all dramatic responsibilities in favour of being (what the Dunkirk marketing people are calling) an “immersive” experience. You’re there. You’re on the beach. Character and plot don’t matter because you’re there, in the thick of things. It’s just like — you guessed it — a video game. And that, ultimately, is the colossal disappointment at the heart of this movie.
They were clearly aiming for The Longest Day but what they gave us was Call of Duty: Dunkirk Edition.
On general release from July 21
