DUNKIRK (2017)

Rated: PG-13

STARS: Tom Hardy, Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branaugh, Cillian Murphy
DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
GENRE: Action/Drama


Imagine one long scene--an action/battle scene--that runs for nearly two hours nonstop. That's Dunkirk. So if you're expecting a little romance or character development to give you a break to catch your breath...forget it! Dunkirk hits the ground running and never lets up, and for edge-of-your-seat adrenaline junkies, that's a good thing.

A mini history lesson. The Miracle of Dunkirk--as it would come to be called--refers to the evacuation of allied soldiers hemmed in by the Nazis on the beaches of Dunkirk, France in the spring of 1940. Over a period of eight days, more than three hundred thousand troops were rescued by a fleet of over 800 civilian boats and merchant ships of all shapes and sizes. They raced to the rescue as the German Luftwaffe bore down on the trapped men. The Royal Air Force engaged the German fighter planes and bombers, contributing to the success of the operation.

What characterization that exists in Dunkirk follows three main threads: A British soldier (Fionn Whitehead) who in the beginning helps a comrade bury a body in the sand. We follow their resourceful fight for survival; a teenage deck hand (Barry Keoghan) who clambers aboard a boat piloted by an older man and his son as they head into harm's way, selflessly hoping to make himself useful; and an RAF Spitfire pilot (Tom Hardy) whose dizzying aerial dogfights with the enemy are perhaps the most riveting sequences in the film. We're right in the cockpit with him, and the emoting is accomplished primarily through facial expression.

RANT ALERT: Dunkirk is loud. I said, DUNKIRK IS LOUD!!!  (Results may vary in your area.) The CRASH-BOOM-BAM of Hans Zimmer's overbearing soundtrack never lets up. That together with bombs going KABOOM and artillery fire going RAT-A-TAT-TAT and torpedoes going...

You get my drift.

It's a literal assault on the senses. (Oh my virgin ears! as we used to say in high school). I suggest earplugs--seriously--especially if you see it in IMAX, and you should, to get the full effect. (Why should I be the only one to suffer?)  In my case, the problem could have been mitigated by theater management who didn't have their heads up their you-know-what. They could have made some adjustments to the decibel levels that are already way too high to begin with for just regular films. But I can now see that most moviegoers of a certain age are already half deaf from being in the front row at concerts by Led Zeppelin and The Who. And the teenagers in the theater are unfazed by anything. So nobody walked out. But after the film I overheard one lady say that somebody should complain to the management. I can see it now. She's standing there trying to tell them about this decibel issue, and they are going,  WHAT? WHAT???

Anyway, as far as battle scene recreations go, Dunkirk is top drawer. Bombs away!

Grade:  B

JILL'S TAKE

To quote tennis legend John McEnroe, "You cannot be serious, Tim!" (I added the last word.) The sound levels in the theater I saw Dunkirk in were manageable. And that's about the ONLY positive thing I can say about this meandering, tedious film. The first fifteen minutes could have easily been cut and nothing of consequence would have happened. We know that thousands of British troops were trapped on the beaches waiting for a miracle because we are told this in a typed message on screen. Not once, not twice, but three damn times. (At first, when this happened, I thought there'd been some technical difficulties, i.e. that the studio had sent a faulty CD.)

Okay. So it's a war movie with the makings of a brilliant plot thanks to history. Only problem? Too many threads and not enough cohesion.Dunkirk was peppered with famous actors with cameo parts, a sure sign for me that a movie is in deep doo-doo. Kenneth Branaugh, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance — who at least has a decent part. But like war itself, the cuts are messy, the message muddled, the battles bloody and untidy. Still, I say, "Where's JohnWayne when you need him?" Without anyone to root for—except history—I got bored. I only cared about Rylance's character Mr. Dawson and his tension-filled trawler. The blame for this, I place squarely on Christopler Nolan, who both directed and wrote the script.    

To quote IMDB's bio of Mister Nolan, it reads: "Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear storytelling...." I couldn't have said it better myself. And after the movie let out, I saw a man wearing a t-shirt that read: "Go to hell cuz I'm going to Texas!" I figured the guy would certainly have something to say about the movie so I asked him. In typical Texan fashion, he had just three words: "I was bored."

But if you want to see some breathtaking, belly-wrenching spitfires in action, get thee to the nearest screening of Dunkirk. If you're lucky, the deafening noise will make up for all the movie's flaws....

Grade: D

INCEPTION (PG-13)

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Tom Beringer

Director: Christopher Nolan

Genre: Action, Sci-fi thriller

Inception feels like it was adapted from a long and complicated novel--though it was, in fact, concocted inside the brain of Christopher Nolan, (Memento) who wrote, produced, and directed the film. Anyhoo, screen adaptations of long and complicated novels often have that feeling of being condensed and compacted--where each plot twist is given only sketchy attention because we have to move along at lightning speed and try to get all those myriad elements in during the allotted time--in this case, creating a two and a half hour, mile-a-minute thriller that's a real challenge to follow.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Cobb, a guy who can enter someone else's dream and either extract information, or plant a seed in that person's mind that can trigger a change in his behavior in the real world. Cobb is hired by an Asian businessman (Ken Watanabe) to screw with the head of a dead rival's son, (Cillian Murphy) to implant the idea to disband his father's empire, and thus save the world from more corporate consolidation.

A subplot involves Cobb's deceased wife, (Marion Cotillard) with whom he has some major unresolved issues. She keeps showing up in the dreams, distracting him from his mission and potentially throwing a monkey wrench into the whole operation.

Inception's real fascination is its dream within a dream within a dream dreaminess, (ahem) and the fantasy--one that I suspect most of us have had--of forsaking "reality" to reside exclusively in the dream world.

While the film tries to present itself as a psychological thriller, its real appeal is going to be to action fans who revel in shoot-em-up and crap exploding all over the place. And even though the action is highly imaginative, with wowie-zowie special effects, (Paris folding in on itself, and other mind-bending images) the wild action is taken to the extent of overkill, and I found myself getting numbed out and just kind of bored with it after a while.

Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is one of the best things about Inception, but unfortunately, it's ceaselessly loud and overbearing. On top of that, there are times when you really can't make out what the actors are saying, and that's a bummer in a movie that needs your total unblinking concentration, or you are lost in a maze of WHA- WHA HAPPEN?.

Final analysis: Just like my geeky cousin Marvin, Inception has a lot of warts, but shows flashes of brilliance.

GRADE: C+

Now playing at home: PEACOCK (PG-13)

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon, Bill Pullman

Director: Michael Lander

Peacock is a straight to DVD release (April 20, 2010) that, remarkably, features some big names in the cast. Irish actor Cillian Murphy shines in the dual role of John and Emma Skillpa--a cross-dressing split personality whose masculine side works as a bank clerk, while his wig clad feminine alter-ego takes on the persona of John's homebody wife. All seems to be going smoothly until a train caboose ends up in John's backyard and threatens to derail his neat little double life when the townspeople of Peacock, Nebraska discover Emma and start to get curious.

Maggie, (Ellen Page) a young single mother on the skids, figures mysteriously into John's past, and holds the key to his weirdness. Like any good psychological drama, the clues are dispersed in increments as the film goes along.

Set in the 1950s, Peacock is a character study tour-de-force, with Murphy alternating between the painfully shy bank clerk persona of John, and the more complex Emma, who is plotting against him to have things ultimately go her way. (And he's awfully pretty as a woman!) It's a Norman Bates-esque performance--and true to form--Emma's increasingly diabolical mindset will lead to some skulduggery before it's all said and done. (As one who grew up in the midwest, the image of a bank standing next to some big grain silos strikes a familiar and an authentic chord. )

Cillian Murphy is so much the standout in this film that it makes you wonder why someone like Susan Sarandon--who plays Fanny Crill, the town mayor's wife--was willing to take on a secondary role that doesn't challenge her in the least. The same with Bill Pullman, who plays John's pain-in-the-ass supervisor at the bank. Ellen Page, as Maggie, is the only other character that is fleshed-out to any degree.

I must put in a word for cross-dressers here, who by and large seem to be a harmless lot--but movies like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and Peacock, may have given them a bum rap.

RIGHT, DAD?

There aren't any trick endings here--we can pretty much see what's coming as a logical progression of the power struggle between two personalities inhabiting the same body--but I found Peacock growing on me, haunting me if you will, in the days immediately after I saw it...reflecting on the old adage that the child is father to the man.

GRADE: B