August 18th 2017 7:45pm

Took my son to see Dunkirk this afternoon so before we entered screen 2 we purchased a box of crisps, a slush puppy made from nuclear waste and a bottle of cider. We were going to include some choccies but after a quick phone call to my bank manager he informed me that for safety sake my overdraft had been capped. My eager son wanted to sit in the front row so there we were watching 45 minutes of vacuous adverts most of them leaning toward the Dinning at the sign of the Ginger Clown. Finally, my son woke me up and the film started, I took two sips of cider and decided to savour it throughout the film.
The action started and soon sea scenes and aerial dogfights were abound. In a Spitfire pilot’s headset you could clearly hear Michael Caine shouting, ‘I told you just to blow the bloody doors off.’ Slowly but oddly I began to feel quite nauseous. I could feel sweat running down my back and my head began to spin. I looked at the cider and thought perhaps it was an odd batch. My nausea became worse and I became concerned that I was going to vomit. I closed my eyes and then it became apparent; I was suffering from terminal motion sickness. I was suffering a symbiosis of air and sea sickness. My son and I dived for cover and crept up to the back seats as if hiding from a Jerry sniper……my sickness became less and we watched quite a mediocre film, which had no story line just a series of tense escape episodes backed by an annoying siren sounding orchestration. Thankfully this all ended with that wonderful Churchill speech being used to cringe-worthy sentimental effect, ‘We will fight them on the’ …… whilst a cardboard Spitfire burned and the Enigma Variations played. Complete and utter dross! I much prefer, and highly recommend, the far superior 1958 version with Richard Attenborough! With a pallid complexion we left and I discarded a full bottle of cider into the bin of cinematic disappointments.

Just a footnote 338.226 soldiers were evacuated from the Dunkirk beaches in eight days in the film it appeared to be about 200. These film extras were rescued by eight leisure craft and two naval vessels which should have been over 800. Poor show from the CGI department I think!