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As both a fresh approach to historical action and a thunderous throwback to old-fashioned war movies, Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" is a triumphant feat of white-knuckle storytelling.
Nolan depicts one of the signal moments of World War II, an event tattooed on the hearts of all Britons: The retreat and evacuation of some 400,000 troops (mostly British, but some French and other allies) from the beaches at Dunkirk, on the French coast, in May and June, 1940.
Nolan, who wrote and directed, tells the story from land, sea and air. Each thread works on a separate timeline, as Nolan perfects the nonlinear narrative tricks he's practiced in "Memento," "Inception" and "Interstellar" in service to a robust and harrowing tale of survival and heroism.
On the beach, or "The Mole," we follow a week in the life of a soldier (played by newcomer Fionn Whitehead) who is only identified, in the closing credits, as Tommy. He becomes a stand-in for every Tommy that fought for the British in World War II — young and scared, but cagey enough to act as the Germans bomb the shore, while the commanders (Kenneth Branagh and James D'Arcy among them) hope for a miracle.
On the sea, Nolan shows us one day with a coastal English family, the Dawsons: Dad (Mark Rylance) and his sons Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) and George (Barry Koeghan). Mr. Dawson is taking his pleasure boat out to sea, loaded with life jackets, at the behest of His Majesty's Navy — part of the civilian maritime service tasked with bringing back as many troops as they can carry. En route, the Dawsons find a shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy), the only survivor of a ship sunk by a German U-boat. The soldier panics when Dawson tells him they're heading back to Dunkirk.
In the air, over the course of an hour, two RAF pilots, Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden) fly their Spitfire fighters over the action, trying to shoot down German bombers. The possibility of being shot down themselves, or running out of fuel, looms heavily over every turn the pilots make.
Nolan cuts back and forth across all three timelines. Characters from one timeline will sometimes show up in another, underlining the shared plight of all those soldiers waiting for rescue.
Tommy's story is the movie's through-line on which everything else hangs. He partners up on the beach with another soldier (Aneurin Barnard) when they see a way to sneak onto a medical ship. When that fails, they end up on a destroyer, along with a young soldier named Alex — and the fact that Alex is played by the pop star Harry Styles gives the audience a familiar face to pick out from the increasingly desperate crowd.
The action sequences are harrowing, as Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema ("Interstellar") put their cameras aboard ships as they're torpedoed and planes in flight. The sound design, augmented by Hans Zimmer's propulsive score, will rock audiences in their seats, capturing the rumble of nearby bombs, the rattle of gunfire and the roar of the Spitfire engines (Rolls-Royce engines, Dawson tells his sons, "the sweetest sound you'll hear out here"). It's worth it to spring the extra bucks to see this movie in IMAX.
In an ensemble of equals, young Whitehead, the veteran Murphy and the surprisingly good Styles give strong performances as soldiers who represent the determination, fear and dismay of the British soldiers. Rylance is a sturdy, quietly intense model of the British stiff upper lip, even when the trip takes a horrible toll. And Hardy — who, as he did in Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises," wears a mask over the lower half of his face through much of the movie — conveys a pilot's steel and rapid-fire decision-making with just his eyes.
"Dunkirk" captures not only the terrors faced by the soldiers on the beaches, but also a sense of the national reckoning the retreat forced on the British people. After this, Nolan tells us, the war was not just for the soldiers to fight, but for everyone in England.
Twitter: @moviecricket —
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'Dunkirk'
Christopher Nolan captures the horrors of the 1940 British retreat and evacuation, and the resolve to survive and save lives.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Opens Friday, July 21.
Rating • PG-13 for intense war experience and some language.
Running time • 107 minutes.