Behind the Line: Escape to Dunkirk

I watched this movie open-minded (It supposedly had an 8 on IMDB, before the negative reviews came in). I was fairly disappointed straight from the beginning, mostly due to VERY illogical behavior from the main characters, rather average acting, terrible foreign languages (I speak German and I can't understand half the German lines lol), weird plot turns.

Right in the beginning the characters are faced with a situation where they can a) do nothing b) attack or c) find a creative solution. They script, almost like always, chooses the most boring option A rather than either the logical or the creative options. That makes the movie very boring to watch, without any surprises.

I was constantly hoping for some kind of interesting turn of events, but even when the options were presented the makers decided to take the greyest possible choice and return back to flatline. The movie essentiall is trying to portray ww2 by showing a horse and wagon, people in uniforms and 'old barns' - otherwise it's decidedly absent and the story is really just about a few guys who make dumb choices all the time.

Barely worth the watch despite that I'm heavily into ww2. Sorry, I'd have liked to like this!

Danny Finnegan, (played by Sam Gittins), is an accomplished British boxer, finding himself retreating from the advancing Germans near Dunkirk. He is captured and a German SS Officer identifies him and pits him in the boxing ring against an equally talent German boxer. The POW's use the cover of the boxing ring to stage an escape.

Where do I start? This movie is so bad !! Low budget movies do not need to be so bad. While I think Sam Gittins played his role convincingly well, the other actors around him that gave poor performances were a major distraction. As a military historian and military gun collector, I spotted numerous flaws quickly in the first few minutes of the movie.

The story line was good, albeit that such events would not have actually happened in reality during the German advance on Dunkirk.

The uniforms? OMG... At least the British uniforms looked authentic. The German uniforms looked much more like they came from a costume store for dress up parties. Close ups on the German helmets were a dead give away as being plastic. The leading German SS Officer would never have worn such an unkempt uniform, His cap looked like he had sat on it.

I found the first 20 minutes or so into the start of the movie very slow and unconvincing. Putting the inaccuracies aside, the story began to flow and I was able to struggle through to the end of the movie.

The Germans soldiers speaking actual German language with very strong British accents in their speech was distracting. Obviously Englishmen speaking German, that they may have spoken for the first time while rehearsing their scripts.

Hand held cameras again !! H.H. cameras are good for dramatizing being jostled in a crowd or attempting to simulate the view of one of the characters, but this hand held camera being held very unsteady in what should have been fixed camera scenes made this movie look very amateur.

Gun fire from the incredibly loud British Enfield .303 in this movie gave out the same decibels and tone of a paintball gun at higher volume.

Audio track of gun fire and poor CGI were totally out of whack. And amazingly, none of the firearms in this movie gave any recoil at all!!.

Overall, not a bad story line and plot, as historically inaccurate as it is,; but the bad acting, inaccuracies, costumes, CGI and camera work left this movie severely wanting. This is a very low end B grade movie, if not hitting C grade. I would give it a 2.5 rating, but gave it a 3 as I could not go halfway between 2 and 3 on IMDB ratings.

As a german citizen I cringed while hearing this guys talking in german. It was just terrible. Its not only how they were speaking but also what they said. No one would speak like that. That was really bad. Did they actually get some advice from a german native? Guess not...

Btw: Sry for my poor english. ;)

Good premise - boxing behind enemy lines, but appallingly non-dramatic in emphasis at key moments. The moral dilemma of our Irish-named prize-fighter with an English accent was made a bit laughable by the unbelievable, good-cop, evil-cop, well spoken, Oxford-educated personality of our sadistic Nazi, camp-commandant. And. as for an Ending? Well lets just say they were low on resources to show anything realistically decent. One or two good points, however, such as the worrisome rawness of the British expeditionary force in contrast to the professionalism of hardened Germans, & the French "paysannes" who were well portrayed, both in manner, and with good props.

Story is pretty decent but the ending is wraps up way too quick. Aside from the obvious bad uniforms and German accents, the set dressing could have been much better and the German HQ is also used in another Ben Mole film. As an indie filmmaker I understand how hard it is to make films on low budget but the producers in this film clearly had little military history advice on weapons, tactics, military culture and bearing (or maybe they did but it didn't show). The camera work is decent and lighting efficient. As others have mentioned the boxing scene punches are clearly not hitting each other which adds to the feeling of low budget. The two main a German officers are not very believable and the script a bit too cliche.