10 Intense Movies That Captivated The Hell Out Of You

In many ways, Christopher Nolan's Oscar-winning war movie is entirely different to any war movie ever made. With a focus on history's most famous evacuation rather than a famous battle and told from multiple perspectives with a strange, looping structure, Dunkirk is manages to be relentlessly intense for all its 106 minutes.

Despite the fact no battles are being fought in the traditional sense, (this is a film about a massive retreat, after all, about getting British boys off the beaches of Dunkirk before the Nazis arrive), a combination of brilliantly devised elements ensure that the pacing never dwindles and the action keeps coming.

First, there's Hans Zimmer's epic score, which - akin to a ticking clock - keeps the film moving, perpetually, towards its inevitable conclusion. Then there's Nolan's decision to approach the narrative in three unique time frames - a week, a day, an hour - in an attempt to keep the tension mounting whilst depicting the evacuation from the viewpoints of those in the air, on land, and at sea.

The resulting film is a fuel-injected classic that - with its heavy focus on images - plays out not unlike a silent film. Experimental, strange, and technically masterful, it's a work of heart-pounding intensity, a film you watch with clenched fists.