Movie Reviewer Complains No Women, People of Color, in ‘Dunkirk’

. . . all white

Director Christopher Nolan’s big budget blockbuster movie “Dunkirk” opens this weekend on thousands of screens across the country. It’s the inspiring story of the British retreat from France in May, 1940, made with Nolan’s typical attention to detail and excellent storytelling.

But a reviewer for USA Today, Brian Truitt, complained that the film lacked major women characters and no “people of color.”

The trio of timelines can be jarring as you figure out how they all fit, and the fact that there are only a couple of women and no lead actors of color may rub some the wrong way.

John Nolte of the Daily Wire applies the necessary beat down:

Did Truitt do any homework about the background of this movie? He does appear to know that Nolan’s latest is based on a true story, which I guess is a start, but he probably learned that from the trailer. The real question, though, is just how clueless about history, about the biggest world event of the 20th century are you when you find it “jarring” that Wesley Snipes doesn’t show up to save the day or that Sandra Bullock is not driving a tank that will explode if it goes under 50 miles per hour?

Complaining about the lack of women and minority actors in a movie about Dunkirk is like complaining about the lack of Sinatra music in Straight Outta Compton or wondering why cancer failed to get equal time in Philadelphia or hectoring Hollywood over the omission of realistic sex scenes in the Toy Story trilogy.

And we cannot only blame Truitt, who is probably a victim of public schools. How did his trigger warning, one so feeble-minded it ranks as a non sequitur, make it past the USA Today editors? Are they all half-wits or does someone personally dislike Truitt so much they have stopped protecting him from himself?

Sorry if the following is inconvenient to your McCarthyistic desire to bully filmmakers into thinking and believing a certain way, but the settled science tells us the following: Trapped at Dunkirk were young, white males. Saving those young, white males were other white males. Trying to kill those young, white males were other white males.

Journalism is dead, and it was a suicide.

I recall similar complaints about the 1993 film “Gettysburg.” No black soldiers!” There were black soldiers who fought in the Civil War. Why not add a few black faces to the film?

Well, the answer is simple; no black regiments fought at Gettysburg. There were “camp followers” and teamsters attached to the Union army who were black but no fighting men.

History can be very inconvenient for the politically correct. I suppose they could have hired a female actress to portray “Winnie” Churchill” or a black actor to play a high ranking Nazi officer. It wouldn’t be historically accurate, but that’s not the point is it? The point is to be “inclusive” and recognize the feelings of women and minorities who shouldn’t feel “left out.”

I sometimes wonder what history will say about our times in 1000 years. Will historians decry the idiocy the age? Or will they celebrate it? I suppose it depends on which ideology wins out.