I agree with many reviewers here. The film isn't as good as the critics think. Shocked it got so many award nominations and definitely not Nolan's best film. Good: The technical achievement is stunning, cinematography is excellent, but not much of anything else. Directing was above average. Bad: waste of talent, poor character development, tedious, uninteresting subplots. Nice images without much meaning. Sorry this isn't on the top 10 war films of all time. Maybe the best war film of its year but falls short of other films, even recent ones such as Fury. Recent classics such as Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down are better. And definitely short of classics like Patton, Apocalypse Now, Das Boot,or Ran.