Mark Rylance is the very heart of Christopher Nolan’s brilliantly directed war movie, Dunkirk. Looking every bit the English gent in a shirt and tie and jumper, Rylance plays a civilian who navigates his small boat across the Channel, hoping to ferry stranded British soldiers back home. Nolan places this quiet man just where he puts the audience: in the midst of relentless action, during one of the most renowned events of World War Two. In 1940, 400,000 British and French troops were surrounded by the enemy on a beach in France, with the English Channel their only escape route home.

Dunkirk is instantly set apart from simpler, hero-driven war movies

The best war movies of the last 20 years, including Saving Private Ryan and Hacksaw Ridge, have also placed viewers in the centre of battle. Nolan has not reinvented that immersive approach, but he comes close to perfecting it.

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The opening scenes visually invite us into the movie. Several soldiers, their backs to the camera, walk down an empty street in the French town of Dunkirk. Nolan leaves a space between them where we, the viewers, can fit, as if we’re following them along the street. Seeing the film on a large screen makes it especially easy to glide into its world . The Imax format has rarely been used to such good effect. (Shot in Imax and 70mm, the film will be shown in theaters in various formats.)

Running from sudden gunfire, one of the young soldiers, Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), arrives at the beach, which is crowded with troops waiting to climb onto too-few ships.  From there, Nolan quickly establishes three different storylines and timeframes that are gracefully interspersed throughout the movie. The land sequence on the beach covers a week. Among the characters, all fictional, are Kenneth Branagh as a British naval commander. He is the most traditional figure, worried about getting his men home.