Would have been good if there were any real story except maybe one about the RAF pilot what little there was. Director Nolan is trying to tell a story through a soldier's eyes. He tracks one young private with no name and gave him almost no dialog throughout the retreat. The soldier with no name wore the same shell-shock expression in the entire movie. Nothing he did was significant - so why are we following him? The pilot whom i was told was a great actor in UK but he had on a pilot's face mask the entire time, only at the end when he fueled out and stepped off his plane did he show his face. The pilot showed great skill in aerial combat. When his 2 other fly mates were shot down, he seemed to have stemmed the entire Nazi air force all by himself. At the end, the story suggests he chose to stay in the fight using up all his fuel than leaving the British ships undefended. Amazingling the ships nearly did nothing to defend themselves! I don't see any AA action. Nolan must be a one-sided believer in air power. I had to stretch my imagination to see what the pilot was up to. The beach at times look deserted. There were supposed to be 400,000 men stranded there. At least they could have CGI some of them in. Weird! The screen writer seems to want to say it's every man for himself out there. There were no order to it. Ken Branaugh was paid to look regal and just say his lines but seems detached to the men or even the war. After an hour of running around, occasional strafing from a couple of Luftwaffe planes and boats sinking it gets monotonous. Without any story building, at least the screen writer could have throw in some perspective from the German side. The only "german" seen were shadows of Nazi helmets descended on the pilot after he bailed out and torched his plane. About the boat sinking, director Nolan chose to show 4 maybe 5 boats sinking if you count the hospital ship in the beginning. The entire British destroyer loss in the operation was six. Nolan was obliged to show almost all of them sinking ?

I thought the 1958 version of Dunkirk was boring, but this one bores just same, except some spectacular air crashes. Not enough to save anything. Not even close to "Private Ryan".