Dunkirk (Movie 2017)

Since this is the start of my staycation, it's the New Year's holiday weekend, and it's brutally cold out, I felt like watching a movie. I rented Dunkirk. It follows the true story during WWII when British civilians came to the rescue in vessels of their military who were trying to evacuate France with the German soldiers closing in. 300,000 were saved. Well known actor/director Kenneth Branagh is in it as well as Harry Styles (boy band One Direction) and Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders). But really there are no stars in this. This is not a character driven story. The characters are almost anonymous to us. We don't know their backgrounds. We are are just thrown into the circumstances with them and watch it unfold. It's the events/ history that is the star of this film. It has 3 focal points-soldiers on the beach at Dunkirk, pilots flying in Spitfires, and a father, son and young boy in a boat on their way to France. You feel the panic, the hopelessness and desperation. An interesting thing is you never actually see a German soldier's face. A faceless enemy just heightens the fear as the bullets are whizzing by or hitting the British soldiers praying to be delivered from death. At the end of the movie we hear a British soldier reading from a newspaper the famous "we shall never surrender" speech by Winston Churchill. Of course we know it is true. The Allies were pushed back in 1940 but eventually won the war. Being a student of WWII I feel this is well made and had a unique way of presenting this part of history.