Dunkirk Reviews - 94 Metacritic - 92% RottenTomatoes

[Nuvendil]

Hiku said:

Augen said:

Maybe it is being a history fan, but knowing about Dunkirk and seeing that moment in time on screen is exciting to me.  The dread and scramble in the uncertainty.  It's not a war storey, more of a survival storey.

First time I've heard of Dunkirk.
I feel like I've seen a lot of survival movies though. Black Hawk Down, The Perfect Storm, etc. It's never been a genre I particularly care for, unless there's an interesting twist to it like Battle Royale, or Saw. The Purge also had an interesting concept, but the excecution sucked and didn't live up to its potential.

The Miracle at Dunkirk was the evacuation of a significant portion of the combined Allied forces (primarily a significant portion of the British Expeditionary Force) from the beaches and port of Dunkirk, France.  After the Battle of France quickly turned into a disaster, over 400,000 men were forced to retreat to Dunkirk and were surrounded by a much larger and more potent German force.  Evacuation was decided as the only chance the army had to survive, but it was a huge race against time as the Luftwaffe constantly harrassed the troops and the German forces slowly closed in.  The evacuation involved quite literally every boat that could cross the channel in time to help, including everything from destroyers to dingies, yachts, and fishing boats.  Had the evacuation failed and that army have been destroyed, Britain would have been left extremely vulnerable and the odds of the later counter offensive being a success would have been hugely diminished.  It is an incredibly tense moment in modern history, hence the emphasis on the ticking clock sound in the trailers.