The story of Dunkirk is one of the most dramatic episodes of WW-II. However, as presented here it is disjointed, difficult to follow. Worse still, there are too few individual characters that the viewer gets to know well enough to care about very much.

The movie is presented in such a disjointed manner that the viewer is completely disoriented as to time and place. One scene is at night, the next is in broad, sunny daylight. In one scene the sea is calm, and in the next the wind is blowing a force 7 gale. Worse still, apparently the same scenes are presented over and over again from different perspectives. I'm sure I will be told that this was done deliberately, and that I simply do not understand the new style of filming.

One of the most annoying aspects was the inaccuracy of some of the things that went on. For example, the filmmakers laid a great deal of stress on one scene in which a fighter ditches in the sea, and the struggle the pilot goes through to get out through the canopy, which is stuck closed. I only mention this sequence because it is one which the filmmakers deliberately chose to dramatize by showing it over and over again, in great detail. The point is that one would think that it would have been part of basic RAF pilot training to open the canopy BEFORE ditching in the sea. That is the sort of thing one would think that an RAF pilot would have been trained to do, and would do instinctively. In other words, there is more than enough real drama in the story of Dunkirk without coming up with phony material such as that.

Incidentally, this business of showing the same scene over and over again may be the "new way" in filming, but all it indicated to me was that the director was padding his movie. In other words, it seems to me that the movie could have been half, or even a third as long, and still told the same story without leaving anything out. In fact, while watching Dunkirk I could not help thinking of Noel Coward's film, "In Which We Serve", part of which also recounted the story of Dunkirk. Somehow Noel Coward managed to say everything that needed to be said about Dunkirk - and he did it in about seven minutes.