May 1940, France. Approximately 400,000 British, Canadian, French and Belgian soldiers find themselves surrounded by German troops in Dunkirk. Operation Dynamo is set up to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force to England. At the center of events are: Tommy, a young soldier who desperately seeks a way to survive like so many others; Dawson, a British citizen who decides to help the troops with his little boat, accompanied by his son and another teenager; and three pilots, who cross the Channel.

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Thanks to the successes of the The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and Interstellar, Christopher Nolan has become a demi-god in Hollywood, considered a first-rate filmmaker. His taking on a war movie pretty much proves his omnipotence within the industry. Dunkirk demonstrates his mastery of the form and his ambitions in terms of concept and ideas, it is a large-scale production with a narrative written around three points of view. The ambition to illustrate the dimensions of the war in terms of sky, land and sea is well-intended, but the movie also reflects Nolan's faults: heavy-handed writing and superficial characters who are more tools than anything else. Hans Zimmer's bombastic score amplifies the images, but Dunkirk struggles to really make sense (especially in its editing and the juxtaposition of its points of view), and isn’t really able to offer an experience that meets its ambitions.