Christopher Nolan's well-crafted 'Dunkirk' an immersive, tempered World War II drama

London-born Christopher Nolan - who grew up in Evanston - has never been a touchy-feely blockbuster filmmaker like Steven Spielberg.

Nolan's fact-based, World War II drama “Dunkirk” is also no Spielberg movie like “Saving Private Ryan.” It's an immersive, bombastic historical epic more interested in how things happen than the people who things actually happen to.

Significantly, Nolan isn't particularly interested in making his characters accessible or known. He dumps the expected Hollywood conventions in this fictionalized account of a massive, courageous wartime rescue. No romantic subplot. No comic relief characters. No plot twists.

Visuals propel this story with minimal dialogue. There's barely exposition telling us about the characters who populate the movie's three narrative threads about Allied troops in the air, on land and at sea.

In May 1940, troops from Britain, Belgium, Canada and France become trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk, France. They offer easy targets for Nazi war planes.

Big ships such as British destroyers can't navigate the shallow waters to rescue the troops, stuck a mere 26 miles from Britain across the English Channel.

Then, in “Operation Dynamo,” one of the most daring and precisely executed missions of World War II, 800 “little ships” - fishing boats, motor boats, yachts, minesweepers, gunboats and cruisers - cross the channel to rescue 338,000 Allied troops.

“Dunkirk” opens with a British squad on the run from German sniper fire not far from the beach.

A skinny young soldier named Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) dodges bullets as he scampers to temporary safety on a panoramic stretch of sandy shore with lots of military men, among them Kenneth Branagh's Navy Commander Bolton, an imposing figure as stiff as his upper lip for all of the film.

Tommy and a mysteriously quiet soldier (Aneurin Barnard) figure out that by carrying an injured man on a stretcher, they can jump ahead of military personnel waiting for a boat.

Meanwhile, dutiful British citizen Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) pilots his small boat toward Dunkirk along with his son and a teen friend who insists on going with them.

In the third thread, Brit Spitfire pilots (Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden) do what they can to keep Nazi planes from attacking the “little ships” on their way to Dunkirk.

Here, Hardy must act with his eyes, as his face is mostly covered by a pilot's mask, making him the year's most hidden actor next to sheet-draped Casey Affleck in “A Ghost Story.”

Visually, “Dunkirk” ranks alongside Nolan's previous works “Interstellar,” “Inception” and his “Dark Knight” trilogy.

Hoyte Van Hoytema's cinematography crackles with crisply detailed, heightened images captured by a combo of eye-popping IMAX and 65 mm film formats, accompanied by Hans Zimmer's unrelenting, exhausting score constantly keeping us on edge.

To see “Dunkirk” in 70 mm (twice the size of the old industry standard of 35 mm), go to Evanston's Century 12 and Chicago's Music Box, River East 21 and Showplace Icon theaters. Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino are among the directors who insist that 70 mm and IMAX film stock create sharper, more painterly imagery with greater color saturation and detail.

“Dunkirk”

★ ★ ★ ½

Starring: Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Fionn Whitehead, Cillian Murphy, Aneurin Barnard

Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 for language, violence. 106 minutes