Box Office: 'Dunkirk' Conquers Competition With $50.5M Debut; 'Valerian' Bombs — The Hollywood...

I have got to see that!

Its an excellent movie. Unfortunately, it has a fork in the road and has to decide which path the viewer wishes to take. There is a howling from the crowd for whom 1000% accuracy is "just passable." There is railing from the story line crowd for whom depth is the sole criteria. So the movie is a little bit of everything. The sea format is disappointing but sadly accurate. The majority of the Royal Navy was under orders not to fill the harbor. So piecemeal rendering of one ship at a time is historically accurate. And the Germans sinking the ships with regularity is also accurate, hence the decision to stay out of range of German gunfire. Due to the gunfire, the beach and the aircraft, the small boats were crucial to the success of Operation Dynamo. As a nice touch, a ton of the small boats that survived the war/mission were present in the film.

Rather than fill the screen with 30000 CGI planes, the director chose to personalize the battle. Its obvious. Anyone who doesn't "get it" needs to use historical common sense. A British fighter squadron contained over a dozen birds and lone Spitfires didn't fly to and from England willy-nilly. Likewise, if its not broken, don't fix it: Hurricanes and Blenheims attacked the bombers and strafed German encroaching units leaving Spitfires to deal with the fighters including more ME-110 than ME-109 variants. Also - duh - the Germans obviously launched more than one bomber. But to portray that, would have eaten in to the story. I have not personally spoken to the director but rather than break my eye ball skirting from one bird to another, one character to another, I'm positive that his storytelling was the key to him portraying air the way he did. This actually enables to you to immerse yourself in the drama of the chase and the fear of what happens when you fall behind. Unlike most epics, the hero does not always win and all of our Spitfire heroes are shot down.

By sticking with just a handful of planes, you see cohesion, spirit and suicide as several pilots check their gas gauges and you see their decisions to stay and fight "on empty" rather than leave the soldiers to their fate. This sacrifice could not have been seen in a "topgun" format with multiple heroes each having to have their side stories. The kills are historically accurate too. The German planes were flying from the edge of their envelope as - contrary to popular belief - they were harassed on the way to the beach. The French didn't just let the Germans fly unmolested! So by the time the average German fighter reached the beach area, he was low on fuel, low on ammo and probably had a hole or two in his bird. They were easy pickings for fresh Spitfire pilots with full gas and ammo. And although the German propaganda machine would never say it, the Stuka was an easily killed death trap with losses to British birds reaching such extreme levels that they were pulled out of the Battle Of Britain within days.

Yes, CGI could have added a few hundred thousand soldiers to the beach, but again, focusing on a handful enables you to savor the moment better. Bad luck, raw emotion and some hero deaths. Not too many side stories but keeping the soldiers to a minimum enables you to feel the relief as they reach the ship, feel the pain as the ship they reach sinks and then wonder if they'll get out. They are not large heroes either; there are no Tom Cruises or Brad Pitts. So when one dies, its unexpected as you have no "guarantee" that a payday will keep the actor in the film until the end. My wife is English and her grandfather was there. He had made the same comment years ago, that although there were close to 500,000 in the town and on the beach, he felt really alone. He felt that every German sniper was trying specifically to kill him and that every Stuka was personally targeting him. He cheered when Stanford Tuck shot down his fifth kill, making him an ace in a day and he remembers hearing none but his voice. The Germans were omni-present but not showing them was a sensible stroke. We only see them in shadow form at the films end when they capture the last Spitfire pilot. The goal of the film was not a "Band Of Brothers" experience with the whole British Army backslapping each other, sharing chow on the fender of a tank and looking at photos of that girl back home.

No, it wasn't the "epic" that the "classic" movie buffs were pining for. Nor could it have been. The fighting near and in the Dunkirk beach head and town was filled with a lot of drama and mayhem and much political infighting. To dwell on any of those aspects longer than it did would have opened a can of worms that the story did not wish to tackle. The Germans are the enemy but aren't demonized, the French are losing the war but only the surface is scratched. To approach it any other way would require a week of films. The movie told a story, told it accurately and was entertaining and somewhat accurate. The ultimate accuracy would have been for an ME-100 to have been escorting the Stuka and Heinkel but sadly, there are no flying examples left. So an ME-109 is a nice substitute. Either way, its a good looking-glass view of an important phase of the second world war.

Fantastic movie! I've seen it twice already. I highly recommend it, my only regret is that I didn't see it in IMAX.