There's not a lot of talking in Dunkirk.

There doesn't need to be. The sights and sound of desperation tell the tale better than any written dialogue could do.

It's 1940, and 400,000 English and French soldiers are trapped in Dunkirk, France, as the German army surrounds them. Their only hope is rescue from the sea, but German bombers and U-boats are making their prospects grim.

Dunkirk isn't an action-packed war movie, full of battles great and small. It's a story of survival against fearsome odds.

You don't really get to know many of the characters in this film; it's no Saving Private Ryan, where viewers become acquainted with a small band of men on a mission. Here, the men are massed on the beach, waiting for rescue, as men at sea struggle to reach and more in the air try to protect them.

There are a few standouts, such as the stalwart naval officer Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh), civilian boat owner Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his son Peter (Tom Glyne-Carney) and pal George (Barry Keoghan), RAF pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy) and various soldiers on the beach, including Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), Alex (Harry Styles) and Gibson (Aneurin Barnard). But they're part of a bigger picture, rather than a true focal point in the film.

The timeline is also skewed, as the events shown both on land and sea would have taken much longer than the air battles shown overheard. (A literal interpretation of the movie would suggest that Farrier was in the air over Dunkirk for the duration of the evacuation -- an impossibility.)

But as a movie, it works well. It gives viewers a sense of the many elements at play as the Germans moved in and the Allies struggled to break free.