Film Dunkirk
 

Watched the film Dunkirk last night, what a waste of money, only good part was watching the Spitfires.

Has been widely praised here..complaints from US that no US soldiers or non-white soldiers shown. This was Dunkirk not D Day.

geoff

I found the watching the disc with the special effects before the movie helped.
To re-enact this event would be impossible but I enjoyed it and even with the limitations well depicted.

My complaint was no dialog between actors, could not get warmed up to anyone, plus why didnt the pilot land his plane nears the embarkation area were he could get picked up.

D-Day, US Soldiers did not enter into my dislike of the film, it was just a bad movie.
The Navy man I guess was the Beach master, I did not see any radio with him.

I watched it at the movies here in NZ a few months ago and found it a bit boring and disjointed.
What I was amazed at, was the number off people who had never heard of Dunkirk and thought it was an original story. Even quite a few people of my age.
I'd always thought everyone had heard of the Dunkirk evacuation.
Just shows that you should never take anything for granted.
Regards Phil :)

I watched it on a long haul flight recently - and was not impressed! Basically for all the reasons given here and the inaccurate portrayal of people like the "beach master" and the use of incorrect types of ships.

It would have been better to use computer generated vessels rather than have an old foreign minesweeper with a UK crew pretending to be a destroyer.

McC

I am sure that the film company initially had plans to use one of the (then) recently retired Type 42 destroyers, I am sure I read somewhere that they wanted to use either York or Edinburgh, I probably read it in a Forum thread on SN though - so should really give up hope of finding it again!

I agree with most on here that using a foreign minesweeper was a poor choice of ship (particularly for us maritime pedants!), it certainly spoilt the movie for me.

I was also quite annoyed at the portrayal throughout the movie that there were not that many RN/MN ships available, and that it was all over in a day or so, when in fact evacuations took part between 27 May and 4 June, involving some 693 British ships, of which 226 were sunk in the operation, just looking at some of the numbers of bigger RN ships in isolation is quite daunting (at a time when we were desperate for escorts):

1 Cruiser (Damaged)
39 Destroyers (6 sunk, 19 damaged)
9 Corvettes/Sloops (1 sunk, 1 damaged)
36 Sweepers (5 sunk, 7 damaged)
113 Trawlers (17 sunk, 2 damaged)

Some of these ships repeated the ordeal many times over - making repeated crossings and saving many thousands of men, for example:
MV Royal Daffodil - 9 crossings, saving 7,461 men
SS Maid of Orleans - 5 crossings saving 5,503 men
HMS Sabre - 9 crossings, saving 3,900 men
HMS Codrington - 8 Crossings, saving 5,450 men

It must have taken extreme bravery by the crews, particularly in the case of the the lightly armed (or unarmed) MN ships - to go back there day after day - with almost no sleep and most of the time under the threat of attack.

Considering that it was made "very late in the day" I thought that overall it was quite good. Perhaps it should've been made back in the 1960's or 70's, like Battle of Britain or Tora,Tora,Tora (and they were in colour!!)
One slip-up I spotted right near the end (ie Spitfire landing on beach) was that behind the sand dunes was a modern-day Container gantry crane. Oh well!

Rgds

Alan G