![]() As the cockpit fills with water, there’s no panic. Even when he’s forced to land in water, he doesn’t skip a beat. Lowden’s eyes are always active, darting from side to side or narrowed and squeezed into deep concentration. He has survived many missions when the average life expectancy of men working his job is just a few minutes. ![]() Lowden’s calm under stress and Collins’ ability to make split-second decisions speaks to plenty of experience as a fighter pilot. Lowden reads Collins’ comments about fuel consumption as pragmatic deliberations, the perfect contrast to Hardy’s quieter, risk-taking heroism. Instead, Lowden and Hardy establish a rapport through the pacing of their sparse, utilitarian dialogue. The time pressures of the air sequences leave no room for a casual backstory. He has only his squadron leader (Tom Hardy) to talk to, though they never share a frame. While in the air, Collins is always on his own, confined to his cockpit. Jack Lowden’s role in Dunkirk is a technically demanding one, too, which could have misfired in lesser hands. It requires a hell of a lot of screen presence. ![]() As one of two characters in the film’s “air” section, and the only one who gets to interact with the characters from land and sea, Collins has to singlehandedly uphold that rockstar RAF personality. When Jack Lowden’s dapper RAF pilot, Collins, gets pulled out of his sinking plane in Dunkirk, he instantly turns on the charm to greet his rescuers with a debonair “Afternoon.” It’s a movie star moment, played by a virtual unknown. JACK LOWDEN as Collins in Dunkirk. Courtesy of Warner Bros.
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