I know, I know, you’re jaded. You’ve seen it all in hundreds, nay, thousands of movies. War movies, survival movies, hanging-on-by-the skin-of-your-teeth movies, abandon-hope movies, never-lose-hope movies. You’ve also seen admirable or despicable actions from soldiers, officers, and ordinary civilians. But trust me, you have never seen all of that brought together in a package such as Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.”

For "Dunkirk" Christopher Nolan cast the puppy-eyed lead singer of One Direction, Harry Styles, as a British soldier during the famed 1940 evacuation. This is entirely appropriate. I say this because the British Army fought World War II with the ferocity of a boy band. I don’t understand why the British feel such a reflex to celebrate it.

Here’s a trip down the the pathway of British military performance in World War II: the British spent a month fighting in France, during which time they got whipped by a German army that was riding horses ten years earlier.