Dunkirk (2017)

Subtitles wouldn't have simply been nice, they were downright necessary. The accents and the heavy background noise of artillery, ocean waves, and engines combined to make it impossible to make out the dialogue most of the time. It also didn’t seem as though the three differently-moving timelines (week/day/hour) were worth the confusion it caused -- especially since the very first one we’re fed is “Mole - 1 week.” Since I had zero idea what “Mole” was (turns out it’s the pier the departing soldiers use to board boats), it was easy to kind of ignore the information.

Gary made the point that the timelines and difficulty in making out the dialogue meant that it was near impossible to connect to the characters, which also made it hard to care about their fates. I also found the lack of blood to be a bit of a cheat. I don’t crave gore, but I prefer honesty to sterilization.

C+