| Warner Bros. | Release Date: July 21, 2017 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
52
Mixed:
0
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Jul 22, 2017
Although Dunkirk is not as labyrinthine as Nolan’s “Memento” (2000) or “Inception” (2010), its strike rate upon our senses is rarely in doubt, and there is a beautiful justice in watching it end, as it has to, in flames. Land, sea, air, and, finally, fire: the elements are complete, honor is salvaged, and the men who were lost scrape home.
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Jul 20, 2017
Jul 19, 2017
Nolan maintains gut-wrenching suspense throughout by cross-cutting between the various characters and their plights. I’d go so far to say that Dunkirk could easily serve as its own master class in the art of film editing. Add to that an absolutely terrifyingly discordant score from Hans Zimmer and the result is, well, a bona fide classic.
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Jul 18, 2017
It’s one of the best war films ever made, distinct in its look, in its approach and in the effect it has on viewers. There are movies — they are rare — that lift you out of your present circumstances and immerse you so fully in another experience that you watch in a state of jaw-dropped awe. Dunkirk is that kind of movie.
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Jul 17, 2017
Dunkirk is a staggering feat of filmmaking, as Nolan's fans are accustomed. Van Hoytema's cinematography conveys death trap closeness even with IMAX cameras on a vast beach. Hans Zimmer again proves himself a masterfully dramatic composer, turning violins into the sound of spiraling aircraft. The performances are solid as such Nolan's vision requires, including pop star Harry Styles briefly.
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Jul 17, 2017
Dunkirk is an impressionist masterpiece. These are not the first words you expect to see applied to a giant-budgeted summer entertainment made by one of the industry's most dependably commercial big-name directors. But this is a war film like few others, one that may employ a large and expensive canvas but that conveys the whole through isolated, brilliantly realized, often private moments more than via sheer spectacle, although that is here too.
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The TelegraphJul 17, 2017
Christopher Nolan’s astonishing new film...is a work of heart-hammering intensity and grandeur that demands to be seen on the best and biggest screen within reach. But its spectacle doesn’t stop at the recreations of Second World War combat. Like all great war films, it’s every bit as transfixing up close.
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The GuardianJul 17, 2017
This is a powerful, superbly crafted film with a story to tell, avoiding war porn in favour of something desolate and apocalyptic, a beachscape of shame, littered with soldiers zombified with defeat, a grimly male world with hardly any women on screen. It is Nolan’s best film so far.
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IndieWireJul 17, 2017
Few movies have so palpably conveyed the sheer isolation of fear, and the extent to which history is often made by people who are just trying to survive it — few movies have so vividly illustrated that one man can only do as much for his country as a country can do for one of its men.
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Jul 20, 2017
It takes everything Nolan does well and everything he doesn’t, everything he fights against and everything he embraces, everything great and terrible about him, and streamlines it, focuses it, until it’s pure Nolan, straight into your veins. It’s the most Christopher Nolan film imaginable. It also might just be his best one.
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Jul 17, 2017
Let other directors play with toy soldiers and computer effects. This is big-time, old-school filmmaking. Dunkirk isn’t overdone. It’s simply done epically...But it’s also human. It has room for small acts of heroism, of kindness, of forgiveness. And for a single, simple important, timeless message of resilience: Take what comes. Do what you can. Never surrender.
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Jul 19, 2017
Taken as a whole, Dunkirk invites comparisons to the works of Kubrick and Spielberg, but it’s neither as scalding as “Full Metal Jacket” nor as clear-eyed, as aware of war’s terrible randomness, as “Saving Private Ryan.” Instead, a streak of honest sentiment, earned under the most hellish of circumstances, courses through this movie and provides it with spine and a soul.
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Jul 18, 2017
Although Dunkirk is technically a war film, its tone and style are those of a high-octane thriller. For his most serious-minded film to date, Christopher Nolan has employed all the weapons in his arsenal to craft something that, despite the Oscar-unfriendly July release date, will almost certainly be remembered when the Best Picture nominations are handed out.
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Jul 17, 2017
Dunkirk is also one of the best-scored films in recent memory, and Hans Zimmer’s music plays as important a role as any character. With shades of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, the melodies are glorious, yet Zimmer also creates an instrumental ticking-clock soundtrack that’s a propulsive force in the action scenes.
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Jul 20, 2017
What Nolan plus IMAX can do is go big. Spitfire swerving, boat tippings, men dropping to the sand as planes scream by — it doesn’t get any better. That first shot of men on a street in a shower of paper on which their deaths are foretold — brilliant. Somewhere inside the mess that is Dunkirk is a terrific linear movie.
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Jul 17, 2017
Dunkirk would have been even better, though, if any of the characters seemed as fully realized as the aerial and naval warfare. Without that, it works best as pure sensory experience; incredible visuals, intense battles. In the rare quiet moments, we’re invited to observe an unusual instrument featured in Hans Zimmer’s score: The ticking of a clock, a reminder that while Nolan can change the march of time, his heroes cannot.
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The Film StageJul 20, 2017
A constant movement unmoored from all but the present moment (however porously “present” is defined here) pushes Nolan forward as a visual stylist and suspense-crafter — lots of portent in the images of armies and crafts, plenty of faith in his actors to look concerned or outright distressed — as it stalls out Dunkirk in most other respects.
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