......... ridiculous set-pieces, pointless/nonsensical imagery (e.g. why in the first few minutes were there neat queues of smartly-dressed soldiers waiting at the edge of an empty sea?).......................
Sorry you didn't like the film Graham - but, each to his own.
Regarding the set pieces, many of these were based (granted loosely) on well-researched historical fact - the Rylance character encompasses much of the story of a chap called Lightoller (who had survived the Titanic) who refused to let the Admiralty take his boat, Sundowner, but, with his son and a cadet, picked up survivors of a sinking vessel mid-Channel and took them back to the Dunkirk beach to collect an astonishing 50-odd souls and carry them back to safety. (His other son had indeed died in the first weeks of the war in an RAF bomber.)
The orderly queues were an iconic image of the beaches and are burned into the British psyche. I disagree they were smartly-dressed. They were lined up waiting to embark on the small Navy launches and cutters that ferried them out to the destroyers unable to get nearer the beach because of their deeper draughts. See pictures below.
The Hardy character is loosely based on Al Deere who attacked several Luftwaffe aircraft before crash landing on a beach. In fact Deere escaped but only after punching an RN Officer in the face who tried to stop him getting onto one of the rescue boats.
In NZ you would not of course have Dunkirk in your DNA, but trust one who does, with many relatives who were there - this film is remarkably good at representing what actually happened.
One of the main stumbling blocks for those that don't like the movie is the deliberate avoidance of fleshing out main characters to identify with. There is little dialogue, Nolan tries to put you in the middle of the action purely as an observer. I think he succeeds magnificently as do pretty well all of the reviewers I have since encountered. And Hans Zimmer's thundering ticking clock musical score will surely earn him his 3rd Oscar!
Sorry you missed out on this.
S