Harry Styles shines in debut film ´Dunkirk´

DUNKIRK, France: The path from pop to screen stardom is strewn with the wreckage of a thousand broken dreams but British singer Harry Styles may have pulled it off first time in wartime epic "Dunkirk".

If the first reviews of the big-budget wartime epic -- which is released this week -- are anything to go by, Styles may be about to join a select club that includes David Bowie and Mark Wahlberg as rare exceptions to the rule.

The One Direction singer plays a teenage British soldier desperate to escape northern France in 1940 as German troops push the Allies into the sea.

"Harry put in an amazing performance," said the film´s British director Christopher Nolan, the man behind some of the biggest blockbusters ever made.

"He very much earned his seat at the table and did a wonderful job," the maker of "Inception" and "The Dark Knight" told AFP.

Critics -- who called the film a "masterpiece" in a string of five-star reviews -- were also pleasantly surprised by how well the pop star did, with one tweeting "Harry Styles can act!"

The Guardian called it a "perfectly strong acting debut" while Britain´s Daily Mirror said "if you didn´t know who he was, you´d probably be picking him out as an actor to watch in the future".

The 23-year-old singer trained with the film´s stunt crew before the arduous shoot on the same beaches from which 338,000 British, French and Canadian troops were evacuated despite constant shelling and bombing raids in the nine days that became known as the "Miracle of Dunkirk".

Styles has screen time alongside heavyweights Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance in the movie. But co-star Jack Lowden said neither he nor the film´s other big screen first-timers, British actors Fionn Whitehead and Tom Glynn-Carney, looked out of place in such company.

Styles, whose debut solo single "Sign of the Times" topped the charts in 84 countries in May, admitted that the shoot, which was hampered by bad weather, was tough and that he was "overwhelmed" by his first few days on set.

Styles´s character Alex is one of a group of young soldiers whose ordeal on the beaches is followed over a week in the film.

Nolan, 46, who made his name with "Memento" starring Guy Pearce in 2000, admitted that he didn´t really know who Styles was before he began casting for the film.