This dramatises/documents the evacuation of Dunkirk - well it sort of tries.

To begin with this has a great opening third. I liked Fionn Whitehead's character and how you know little about him except his will to survive. The action is very dramatic and you can almost taste the cordite as shells smash into the ground throwing bodies into the air.

For all that - this film has some real issues for me.

It is shot out of sequence a la Pulp Fiction. Why? I don't know. It adds nothing but confusion.

The movie goes on for far too long repeating the same events again and again until they just become boring. To try and liven things up, more explosions are thrown in. But when things just blowup for no apparent reason it makes things boring AND odd.

Many points were very on the nose with some awful dialogue. "Hey, you, your old." "Well old men send the young to fight so I'm going to get myself blown up to prove a point."

I don't want to be the guy who crinkles up his nose and points out that they didn't use that particular radio antennae until such a year but... This operation was massive! Over 300,000 men were evacuated in over 800 ships. waves of German aircraft numbering in the hundreds bombed the beaches and port. Dunkirk was turned into a smoldering fortress, the beaches clogged with vehicles, guns and supplies. But you get no sense of that here. The queues at Brighton Beach for ice creams during lock-down were busier than the evacuation lines in the movie. This film gives the impression that neither the British or the Germans really cared about the evacuation and only sent over the odd plane, ship or submarine that had nothing better to do.

For as much as it wants to cheer for the humble every-man it can't resist going all Hollywood at the end. If silk wasn't on ration I am sure a few of the characters would have had red capes.

It is gripping for a while but my attention and interest in the subject waned by about halfway through.