DUNKIRK

Only days after its cinema opening it has already become fashionable to knock Christopher Nolan's magnificent "Dunkirk" as if Nolan's past success was tantamount to some kind of blot in his present copybook or did the films naysayers simply expect more? I admit a bit of CGI might have helped the films scale; there seemed to me a paucity of both men and boats but for once scale isn't the raison d'etre for Nolan's film. Clocking in at under two hours and eschewing stars in favour of a handful of decent actors Nolan homes in, not on the epic, but on the small

At the beginning of the film titles tell us that we are actually seeing three different time-spans running concurrently; a week at the Mole, (Dunkirk itself), a day on the sea and an hour in the air and thanks to some brilliant editing we experience events on the beaches, in one small pleasure cruiser and in an air battle simultaneously. This is no "The Longest Day" but something altogether more intimate. If the action sequences are on a relatively small scale for a war picture of this size, the suspense and the fear they generate are epic and Nolan ensures that every dogfight and burning vessel looks damn real. Here is a war film that has a ring of truth to it and I found it deeply moving.

The cast may seem large but by using talented players who can actually act, the characters he concentrates on come vividly to life. Newcomer Fionn Whitehead is excellent as the young soldier we are first introduced to at the beginning of the film and follow through to the very end while Mark Rylance has no trouble stealing every scene he's in as the civilian determined to make it to the beaches and back again. If Kenneth Branagh and Tom Hardy seem more like guest stars, they too create credible characters with whom we can identify while technically the film cannot be faulted; this is a film that can safely expect a slew of Oscars next year. It's also the film most likely to pick up the coveted Best Picture prize. Nolan has finally proved he is a lot more than the sum of his parts.