Cinema: Battle Lines

Weekend at Dunkirk. This random, well-photographed essay on the futility of war will prove a letdown to audiences lured by the marquee pull of Jean-Paul Belmondo. As a French soldier sweating through the British evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, Belmondo braves German bullets, saves Catherine Spaak from rape, and growls defiance in a flat Yankee accent. Seems he has been dubbed as well as drubbed, and any nuances that his gravelly, one-of-a-kind voice might have lent to the performance are effectively erased. With only one ace in the whole, the distributors of Dunkirk might have been wiser to let him speak...

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