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We went to see the movie this afternoon.
Both of us left feeling disappointed.
I hoped to learn more than I knew about the battle.... that didn't happen.
I expected that the writers would pick some character and follow that person's story/experience.
Nope.
It was disjointed. We saw a LITTLE about a French teenager/young man, a pilot, and a civilian boat that came to ferry soldiers.
Not enough to develop a character, and barely enough to know what was going on even.
The young French man--it was not revealed that he was French until 60% into the action. Prior to that it was unclear if he was a German mole, a Brit, or just who. He never spoke and was in a brown military uniform (as was everyone else).

Your experience may differ.

Haven't seen it, but is character development really what Hollywood should be going for in a film supposedly about important history?..especially about warfare?

thanks for the heads up.
i would have been disappointed too

GFB wrote:Haven't seen it, but is character development really what Hollywood should be going for in a film supposedly about important history?..especially about warfare?

No--but you need it to make a story to follow.
After we left the theater, I was trying to figure out what made it so disjointed and I decided it needed a character to follow.

If I were very cold in the analysis-- it consisted of battle scenes by various characters and the audience was left trying to figure out who was doing what and why. We hopped from a street fight scene to the beach to a boat, to a plane and back again and again.

Here is another opinion:

Oh, man, I loved it. For a lot of the very reasons you didn’t like it, as a matter of fact.

I felt it showed what it was like to be a soldier in war more than anything else I’ve seen. It’s not about heroic moments for the most part. It’s about survival. Soldiers are, sadly, interchangeable and expendable.

It felt like being embedded, not like a history lesson. I thought it was magnificently done and extremely powerful.

The soldiers didn’t know what was going on in the bigger context either, and I think that’s exactly why we aren’t told more.