This was the one previously released Nolan studio movie I had yet to watch when I got the idea for this series of posts. I paid to stream it, and I was sorely disappointed.

The opening text told us the gist of what would happen in the film, so I basically got it, but otherwise I just felt disconnected. A bunch of soldiers in WWI (or was it WWII – the fact that I don’t even remember says something) are trying to get to safety, that much is obvious (or told to us in the opening writing). The screenplay otherwise gave me no sense of who the characters were or what the plot was, though. The writing was so flat and dull that my mind kept wandering and soon I couldn’t wait for the movie to be over. The cinematography and sets are nice, I guess, but nothing that special and certainly not enough to get me invested in the movie despite the other shortcomings.

Perhaps Nolan just isn’t on his game when doing something this straightforward. He needs to be blowing our minds with the type of story he’s presenting if he’s gonna engage us.

What blows my mind here is that Dunkirk is tied with Insomnia for Nolan’s third highest-rated movie on the Tomatometer, far ahead of The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar and Tenet. Perhaps most critics like their movies more cut-and-dry. Still, I’m hardly alone in my love of his mind-bending films. Dunkirk actually snapped the director’s SPECTACULAR streak of six straight movies in the IMDB Top 250, with the last movie that hadn’t made it being Insomnia. 🤷

Maybe part of the reason I found Dunkirk so flat is the comparison to Sam Mendes’s vastly superior 1917, which I saw earlier this year and which IS deservedly in the Top 250.

Oh well.

Bottom Line: Nolan is Human.

Up Next: Back to mind-bending!

​