Dunkirk

[DaddyAce]

I wish they can make a ww2 movie strictly about the missions and air combats between the Russians, Germans, Britain, Italian, Japanese and Americans. Would be great to see the battles from all sides while the war was going on. It would probably be a 3 hours movie but it will be well worth it. What you guys think?

Heck they could make a whole series on this, I for one would eat it up.....got any pull with film producers Rude?   

[Devil 505]

I wish they can make a ww2 movie strictly about the missions and air combats between the Russians, Germans, Britain, Italian, Japanese and Americans. Would be great to see the battles from all sides while the war was going on. It would probably be a 3 hours movie but it will be well worth it. What you guys think?

One single movie covering all of this? that would actually be terrible.

You need to spend time setting the stage, building the characters, and informing the audience as to what's at stake in victory or defeat.

What we need a concerted effort to make a film representing one battle or campaign and to tell it unbiased from both sides - ala "Tora, Tora, Tora!" - only with more personality shown in the characterization of the historical figures.

[donna43]

I saw it Thursday 20th thought it was good and I must say that the HE 111 looked "real".   There are three plots to the movie the 1st The Beach, 2. The Air and 3. The Boats which kinda goes back and forth.

[Muzzy]

First off...it's not a movie about grand sweeping battles...it's a quiet film that lets the actors' expressions and the visual images convey the emotion. This isn't an action movie at all...when the action comes, it's oddly claustrophobic. As for the air combat...best ACM since Battle of Britain.

Also, you know you play too much AH when you watch this movie and you find yourself muttering "there's the shot...there's the shot! Take it! Take the shot!" during the Spitfire sequences.

[Kanth]

"He's not leading him enough!!!"

And I thought, I wonder how many of us have more time in SIM than those pilots had hours of training.

I don't know how many hours they had or what their percentage of newbs was.

Really enjoyed the movie.

[DaveBB]

My high school history teacher was an officer in the Army, Vietnam Vet and M-60 tank commander.  Super cool dude.  He taught us some of the stuff he learned while studying in the army, such as the turning point of World War II wasn't D-Day (mind you, this was the mid-90s and everyone thought D-Day was the turning point), and what really happened at Dunkirk.  Maybe more evidence has come to light since then, but he taught us two things led to the successful evacation of Dunkirk.  (1) Goering wanted to impress how powerful the Luftwaffe was and how air power could win battles.  So the German tanks and troops were held in reserve while bombers were solely used to attack the British.  And (2) 50,000 troops were left as fodder to fight off the Germans while the remainder of the British Expeditionary Force could be evacuated.  All of these troops would be captured or killed.

[tmetal]

My only real complaint is that every time the movie jumps between the 3 plot lines it either moves forward in time or backward in time without any real indication until minutes into the new plot line.  IMHO this facet of the movie could have and should have been done better; for me it was jarring enough to pull me out of the immersion.

I have seen video of German made Bf109's flying at airshows. Is it really that hard to get some air to air footage of one of these genuine Bf109's for a movie instead of ALWAYS using those gawd-awful ugly Spanish 109's?  I know the % of the population who this would matter to is ridiculously small but this movie seemed to go out of its way to try and do the air to air scenes well.

[Hajo]

My favorite WWII Air Combat Movie is The Battle of Britain filmed in 1969.  Along with Tora Tora Tora I think they are the closest to the historical event.

[sonic23]

This movie was mediocre at best i would not go recommending it to anyone. The air combat was probably the most well done shots of the movie and i was still thoroughly underwhelmed there was a part where he goes through the clouds comes out and is still right on his 6 i wanted to see more of a back and forth i guess with who was winning the fight. Also every time a plane gets shot down it just starts smoking until it goes into the water very lame no parts ever getting shot off no variety of any sort.

[Rich46yo]

Warning SPOILER DONT READ ANYMORE if you havnt seen the movie.



I just came back from the I-max version. First off dont pay $15 a ticket for I-max. The thing is so loud I have a head ache.

I went cause theres not a lot of WW2 flight movies and the battle of Dunkirk was first and foremost a flight battle. There was always 16 RAF squadrons assigned and 32 different squadrons participated as the squadrons rotated to rest and get new aircraft. The Luftwaffe had two Air Corp assigned and ended up Losing 240 aircraft during the air component of Operation dynamo. The RAF flew 171 recce sorties in those 9 days, 651 bombing sorties, 2,739 fighter sorties, and lost 106 aircraft. There were also a few French squadrons operating out of England. Almost 340,000 troops were saved at Dunkirk during 7 days of evacuation. Thats the size of a good size city.

So this was no little thing. What really disappointed me about the movie the most was the scale of it, which was really Low rent. How many shots of the same 3 Spits, the same 1 HE 111, the same 2 109s, the same 2 model Stuka's, the same 1 Destroyer, and the same 1,000 extra's on the beach in British army uniforms can you show? And they spent 150 m on this movie?

A few of the model scenes were laughable. They had one Stuka crashing into the beach that looked worse then the BOB crash scene when they were bombing the radar station. A few Stuka scenes didnt look to bad but again, only 2 ? At the end they put a Spit in front of a green screen and showed it gliding over the beach and the scene was just awful looking. There was very little CG used and there are just very few real aircraft available nowdays to pull it off.

The time line of the movie was disjointed and it was confusing. There wasn't even any blood and while I'm not a fan of blood and guts that what war is and people get blown to bits when bombs are dropped on them.

I give the movie 1 star. Really I feel like I was robbed.

[shotgunneeley]

I gave it an 8/10. Best war movie ever? Hardly.

Like it has been said here:
1) didn't like the non-linear plot line shifting between points of view. Was confusing keeping up with the order of events. The labels at the beginning (e.g. the mole - one week) were so ambiguous I had no idea what they were referring to. All those points of view kept scrambling around and I kept wondering how many times we were going to see the same mine sweeper sink.
2) In real life there were hundreds of private boats coming to the rescue over a weeks worth of time. What did we see in the movie, some 15 to 20 little boats coming in and saving everyone in the course of an hour?
3) I like some dialogue in movies. Staring around at each other and mumbling doesn't keep me interested.
4) I didn't much care for the soldier's (Tommy) side of the story. I might have misinterpretted this part, but I inferred the two running to get the wounded man on the stretcher to the boat as a means to bipass everyone else and get their own ticket to England (not for the interest of saving the wounded man). I may be harsh for speaking without being in that situation, but I didn't feel like rooting for them afterwards.
5) haha I didn't think Tom Hardy would make the cut in AH by waiting until a distance of what seemed to be 50 feet just to miss so far behind the target. Only when he managed to get a kill while gliding dead stick for the last half of the movie did I believe he had some AH talent.

[Gman]

Local Royal Navy vet that survived Dunkirk came out to see the film at 97.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3617564/calgary-veteran-who-survived-dunkirk-causes-a-stir-at-movie-premiere/

[lyric1]

Its different. I liked it. 

[Rich46yo]

Local Royal Navy vet that survived Dunkirk came out to see the film at 97.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3617564/calgary-veteran-who-survived-dunkirk-causes-a-stir-at-movie-premiere/

G I dont believe anything I read in the papers. I doubt ANY man would belittle a movie about a battle where he lost buddies. Besides the film DOES capture the hero'ism of those guys and that nation it just does it on way to small a scale and in a convoluted story line. Kenneth Branagh is an excellent actor but if I had to watch him pace up and down the same pier with the same ship tied to it one more time I was going to scream. Over 700 little pleasure boats were used to get those guys off the beaches not 12. Over 230 RN ships were used not 2. I'd bet between the RAF and Luftwaffe there were over 10,000 aircraft sorties flown in 7 days, does the film give you that "feel".

Also there was still a war going on in the streets of Dunkirk where Brit and French forces fought to the last man to get those guys off the beaches. Every day there were running gun battles in the streets. There were thousands of bodies on the beaches, many blown to pieces. 1,000 Dunkirk civilians alone were killed during the battle. And the artillery? There were thousands of artillery rounds aimed at those beaches by the Germans, and the ships, and the movie didn't show one, let alone return fire from the RN.

I found some German footage of the battle. At the 12:00 mark there is footage of what it looked like after the battle and it sure wasn't what I saw in the film. Not even close. I would have rather seen this movie in 70mm Panavision, it was actually shot with real film. The transfer to digital doesnt look good, it usually never does, and always looks to dark with its color washed out.

Typical Hollywood. They spend a fortune to shoot all digital, and force the Theater owners to do the same with projection, and now are going back to 70mm film to get people back in the theaters cause the digital movies look just as good on widescreen TV  with surround sound systems. So now the theaters have to buy film equipment again so their customers dont just wait a few weeks to watch the pixels on their TVs at home without buying $10 popcorn and $7 cokes.

[Nefarious]

I thought it was a great film. I was able to put the pieces together pretty easy. I thought the assembly of the plot lines was done well and not confusing at all.

I will probably buy it on blu-ray or DVD.