As I promised (at least to myself) earlier, this is my first serious attempt at a recap. My writing skills are a little rusty at the moment, but this movie has always irritated the hell out of me and it's a perfect excuse for me to tear into it.

Good will always triumph over evil, because evil is dumb.

Das Boot. Just thought I'd get that out of the way. It's pretty much impossible to hold a serious discussion of submarine movies without mentioning it, and I'm probably going to mention it 50 times or so in the process of this recap. The reason? Because it's fucking awesome, in a grimy, depressing German sort of way. U-571, on the other hand, has pretty much been forgotten and relegated to the dust bin of movie history, only occasionally being brought up in comparison to other submarine movies or blasted as an example of How Those Damn Yanks Alter History In Their Movies. U-571 is constantly compared with Das Boot, and for good reason. It's basically the retarded red-headed stepchild that follows Das Boot around and just wants to be like normal people. I've seen the Director's Cut and Uncut versions of Das Boot multiple times in German, read the novel, and even bought a copy of Lothar-Gunther Buchheim's U-boat War...and the biggest question I have about U-571 is this: "What purpose does this movie fill by existing?"

I'm hard-pressed to find one iota of originality in this whole thing. U-571 isn't a movie so much as it's Grandma's moldy two-week old casserole of submarine movie cliches. It combines the Captain-XO tension of Run Silent, Run Deep (that is, if Clark Cable and Burt Lancaster had the charisma of Cheese Wiz), the look and atmosphere of Das Boot, the "grab the boat" plot of The Hunt For Red October, the destroyer-on-U-boat action of The Enemy Below. Mix in lots of evil Nazis, depth charges, torpedoes, enormous gasoline explosions, and nautical jargon, and you've got every submarine movie ever made.

Speaking of Us Damn Yanks, U-571 started a storm of controversy based on the fact that it depicts Americans doing something that the British did in real life. Not only did they capture an intact Enigma machine in early 1941, they managed to capture an intact U-boat a couple months later, sailed it to England, renamed it HMS Graph, and recommissioned it as a Royal Navy submarine. The entire situation could have been avoided by placing a brief scene in the movie where a character explains that the Germans are using a new encoding machine in mid-1942 that the Allies couldn't decipher. This would have been historically accurate, and shut most people up - but I suppose Jonathan Mostow thought the movie needed another endless depth charge bombardment.

Jonathan Mostow - ring a bell? In the past decade, he's given us U-571, Terminator 3, and Surrogates. Compared to Michael Bay, he's merely a second-rate purveyor of painfully mediocre, derivative, big-budget action movies. Less loathsome than the Bayhem, Mostow comes out of the woodwork every now and then and pops out another predictable blow-em-up just in time to pay for the newest addition to his mansion.

But anyway, on with the recap.

Characters

Lt. Andrew Tyler - Matthew McConaughey - The Executive Officer of the S-33, who will eventually face Life And Death Situations Which Will Test His Abilities As A Commander In Wartime(tm). Has two facial expressions.

Lt. Cmdr. Mike Dahlgren - Bill Paxton Personality free Captain of the S-33, who, In The Face Of Extraordinary Circumstances, will demonstrate to Tyler the Importance Of Strong Leadership Required In A Commanding Officer(tm). Drowns while standing on the bottom of a studio water tank.

Chief Petty Officer Henry Klough - Harvey Keitel Utterly bambozzled by the idea that the interior of a German submarine would be "all in German!"

Jon Bon Jovi - Lt. Pete Emmett Is violently decapitated by a flying hatch when the...never mind. They cut that part to receive a PG-13 rating.

The Other Americans - Fearless, proud, and exceptionally exceptional in the field of excellence in all regards. Have nicknames like "Tank," "Trigger," and "Rabbit." Can master the use of unfamiliar weapons systems in under a minute. Most of them end up drowning or getting shot, but damned if I can remember their names.

Zee Germans - Exceptionally stupid and evil ragtag bunch of stupid evildoers who keep getting in the way of the Americans. Couldn't hit shit if they slapped a toilet. They Build incredibly strong submarines, however.

The U-571 - Nearly invincible German U-boat, armed with laser-guided deck guns and atomic torpedoes and bigger on the inside than on the outside. Comes equipped with a plug-and-play interface should a motley skeleton crew of American submariners find themselves onboard. Finally succumbs to hundreds of close depth charges near the end of the movie.

U-571 starts with an opening scroll explaining that the Germans are sinking hundreds of Allied ships and basically making a great big mess of things. Cut to the control room of the titular U-boat, where we see the Captain at the search periscope setting up a shot on an Allied oil tanker. Red light envelops the compartment, as if 500-watt bulbs had been installed. U-571 fires two torpedoes at the tanker, which take about ten seconds to arrive at the target, causing it to explode in the first of many enormous gasoline explosions in the movie. The dreaded Machine That Goes Ping cuts in suddenly, and a British destroyer bears suddenly appears within spitting distance of U-571, bearing down on them at 30 knots.

Historical aside:
Periscope optics of the period were so poor that nighttime attacks were usually conducted on the surface.

After making a mental note to fire the sonar guy after they return to base, the captain orders a crash dive to 60 meters, despite the fact that he could easily go down to 200, and oh yeah, there's a destroyer coming down on them like a dog with a bone in his mouth. Soon enough, depth charges are raining down on the boat, which causes light bulbs to burst, pipes to leak, and everyone gets shaken around a lot. And they come, and come, and come...if any WWII-vintage destroyer could drop this many depth charges at one time, I must have not gotten the note. Unfortunately, one explodes a little too close, which sets off an explosion in the engine room, killing the only two men on the boat who knew how to operate a diesel engine in a better-than-amateurish manner.

Historical aside:
Diesel fuel has a much higher flash-point than gasoline and isn't usually known for exploding violently. Also, I'm pretty sure the Germans cross-trained their submariners in the obscenely unlikely event that a U-boat's entire complement of diesel mechanics were killed in an explosion.

The British destroyer apparently catches a bad case of the crabs from U-571 and makes a bee-line for the nearest hospital. Hey, that's my only explanation for why it's mysteriously disappeared when U-571 pops to the surface a couple minutes after their mechanics gets toasted. The captain (whose name is "Gunther Wassner," which I believe is German for "good water") gets on the radio and requests a supply boat to come to their assistance, and to deliver some fresh sauerkraut while they're at it, too.

Historical aside:
British destroyers by this point in the war had the tenacity of cockroaches. At one point in Iron Coffins, Herbert Werner describes being depth charged for 37 hours. 37 hours. Jesus.

Cut to America and that perennial favorite war-movie cliche, the big going-away party. Big Band? Check. Sailors in pressed white dress uniforms? Check. Token female characters? Coming right up. The main characters being introduced, one at a time, in a series of creaky expositional sequences which deliver nothing more than sketchy character development? Hell yeah. As we're introduced to Lt. Tyler, he's moping around because he's been turned down for command of the S-33 once again. Considering that it's a leaky, 25-year old obsolete chunk of war-torn scrap metal, and the S-boats were notorious for cockroach infestations, the garbage scow Monica Lewinsky would probably be a more prestigious command.

But no. As we learn from Dahlgren, Tyler just doesn't have the guts to go out there and lead his men to glorious victory over the evil Japanazis and score one for ma while singing the Star-Spangled banner in the original key. This is the grand idea that Jonathan Mostow is espousing in this film: that leadership in wartime is difficult, and sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. Thanks for explaining this to me, movie. We're also introduced to Harvey Keitel in this scene, who describes himself as a "sea dog who needs some salt," or considering that he's a lifetime submarine veteran from the First World War, and still a Petty Officer, someone in dire need of a promotion.

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Okay, going to stop this for now and pick it up later. If this utterly sucks, just tell me so.

Nitpick: the character was a Chief Petty Officer (E-7). That was as high as you could go as an enlisted man at the time ... E-8 (Senior Chief) and E-9 (Master Chief) weren't established until the late fifties.

I did toy about reviewing this a few years ago and am deeply thankful that you bit the bullet first, as my head would explode with Historical Realism Rage before the end of the first reel. IIRC, by 1944 the U-boat Threat was more of the U-boat Vague Irritation.

Oh - and - wear your "Remarkable WW2 Geek" badge with pride!

"So, as you understand, the British still aren't too happy about this movie."

You're not kidding! Even mention of "Objective Burma" in a town like Catterick will get you a good tonking.
More seriously, when you say "Portsmouth", could this refer to Portsmouth UK? Just wondering.

The German Surname Gambit simply does not ring true! Even as an ignorant Brit I understand that loads of Americans had German surnames and didn't bother to suffer Plot Angst about it.

I think I'll have to grit teeth and avoid comments for a while, or my Inner Geek will annoy the rest of the forum.

Off to a stunning start! Do keep up with the historical asides. As someone who a: disliked this movie and b: disliked the history in it even more, I appreciate it. It makes me want to go search for the textbook I used back in 1989 when I took a history class in high school that was nothing but the history of WWII. Ah, the olden days.

Random Aside:
Popping over to IMDB for a second, it says that if I enjoyed U-571, I might also enjoy Mission Impossible II and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Perhaps therein lies the problem.

The intelligence report being studied by the S-33 officers includes an excellent photograph of an Enigma machine - so the French resistance can get right up to one of the things and take a picture of it, but can’t actually steal one? The next sequence essentially depicts that the S-33 is yes, a rusty old shitbucket. They dive the boat, a maneuver initiated by Harvey Keitel yelling "Dive! Dive! Dive!" and sounding three blasts on the diving alarm. In real life, he’d sound three blasts on the diving alarm to order a surface, and would only say "Dive!" twice upon diving, but since this is the Mostowverse, we don’t see half the crew trying to turn S-33 into the Flying Sub from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Anyway, the boat levels off at periscope depth, and during a watertightness test, a pipe starts leaking after being tapped with a hammer. Dahlgren raises one of the periscopes, and water starts pouring out from around it. A sailors asks if S-33 could dive to 150 feet and survive, and an officer replies "she’ll go straight to the bottom if we don’t stop her!" Christ, this whole movie must be pure Fetish Fuel for those creepy World War II geeks that insist that every German war machine ever made was an unstoppable killing machine, and Allied weapons were useless piles of garbage that never worked. I think we call them "Neo-Nazis."

We’re now introduced to S-33’s gang of Redshirts laying in their bunks, all stripped down to the waist and sweaty for the laaaadiess in the audience (those poor, poor laaaadiess who got dragged to this movie by their boyfriends). A group of them are discussing what happens when a submarine goes too deep, and one of them pulls out an egg and crushes it. So let’s mark down another submarine movie cliché in our logbooks: Scaring The New Guy. Based on this conversation, we can deduce that sometime before this movie is over, a submarine is going to dive well below and rated test depth, the hull will creak a lot, and maybe some rivets will pop out. Seriously, was Mostow actually trying to keep us in suspense about that one? In another scene, we see a sailor writing a love letter and staring at a picture of his wife. I’m going to bet he doesn’t make it to the end.

Tyler and Dahlgren (who was wearing the sleeve stripes of a Commander earlier in the movie, but apparently got knocked down to Lt. Cmdr. when no one was looking) share an awfully dull scene together, in which they discuss why Tyler just doesn’t have the awesome Red-White-And-Bluesion Balls of American Steel needed to sock it to those Naughty Nazis for real. It's around this point where the blandness of Matthew McConaughey and Bill Paxton's performances starts getting insufferable. I know the two are rather mercurial actors, and they're both portraying professional military officers, but you could probably replace every scene they have together with William Sylvester's scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and not really lose anything. At least Dr. Floyd was amusing in a smug, milquetoast kind of way.

We cut back to U-571, which is still sitting crippled on the surface in mid-Atlantic. By this point, you’d think they’d manage to fabricate a sail, maybe cobble together some oars out of something, or hell, have the entire stand on the stern and blow really hard. Turns out the Kriegsmarine was really just a giant make-work scheme, because none of the crew can make the diesels run for more than five seconds, not even the one that worked on tractors back home.

Historical Aside:
Looking at the book U-boat War Patrol: The Hidden Photographic Diary of U-564, an appendix in the back lists two torpedo mechanics, a chief engineer, a trainee chief engineer, a diesel chief, an electric motor chief, two diesel engineers, two electric engineers, two electric motor mates, four diesel stokers, and three E-motor stokers among the crew. So, did ALL of these guys get killed in that engine room explosion?

One of the lookouts on the bridge spots a British lifeboat approaching, and in the next shot, it’s about 50 yard aways. So a freaking lifeboat just snuck up on them? They ask to be taken prisoner, promising not to eat all the sauerkraut, take up too much room, or complain about the smell. Unfortunately for them, they can’t take any prisoners, so the captain orders them to be machine gunned. The crew protest for a few seconds, but since the Captain is following orders from "the Fuhrer," out comes the MG42 and the gunner massacres everyone in the boat.

It's gonna take more than a little "historical aside" to explain everything that's wrong with this scene. On a film making level, it's purely gratuitous. It has no bearing on the plot whatsoever, besides to provide an Obligatory War Crime Scene, and you could remove it entirely and not miss a thing. The only reason why the scene is even included is to demonize the German characters, in case anyone in the audience had seen Das Boot and might be falsely sympathizing with them, and so we won't feel bad when all of them get killed 15 minutes later. The scene is also bullshit on a historical level: while German U-boats sank nearly 3,000 ships in World War II, there's only one recorded case of survivors being gunned down afterward.

After the movie came out, Mostow tried to hand-wave his way out of this, saying that U-boats "occasionally" machine gunned the survivors of their handiwork, and that the German u-boatmen as a whole were the most fanatical Nazis in the German military. How interesting then, that I haven't found a credible naval historian who will actually confirm the latter statement. Yes, there were hardcore Nazis in the submarine service, but from what I've learned, most of them didn't two shits about politics. Ironically enough, Karl Donitz, the commander-in-chief of the German U-boats, was actually defended by Admiral Chester Nimitz at the Nuremberg Trials, who didn't understand why "unrestricted submarine warfare" was a war crime, since he'd condoned it's use in the Pacific.

Now that I've bored everyone to death, Hitler never actually gave any specific orders about the treatment of survivors. Actually, if he'd been given absolute control over U-boats, the war probably would have been over by 1944. The Laconia Order, which forbid the rescue of survivors by U-boats, wasn't issued until three months after this movie takes place, meaning the Captain Wassner could have rescued those survivors and not gotten into trouble.

So suck on that, Jonathan Mostow.

About those grenades - surely one or two of those splendid American White Phosphorus grenades would do the job far better than HE ones? The entire sub crew would be asphyxiated in seconds without anything being damaged.

Ah - but then you couldn't have a nerve-shredding high-octane gun battle, could you? Bite your tongue and carry on!

Nah. It's those magic Hollywood grenades that make a great big boom, don't damage anything, and kill people instantly, leaving a pretty little non-disemboweled body on the ground.

On a vaguely related note, I finally entered the 21st century yesterday and bought a new widescreen, flat-screen, HDTV. Best Buy was playing U-571 as a demo disc on one of their home theater setups, and I was tempted to just stand there like an asshole riffing on it, but decided not to make a scene. The subsim.com crew already know me as one of the most 'Spergtastic naval enthusiasts out there, and I didn't feel like spreading the love.



Hey, don't feel alone. I like it too, although my mother seems to enjoy it more than I do. Gotta love a movie where solid shot doesn't explode in a giant fireball just for once.

Hey! I just did that myself a couple weeks back! Bought a nice 42" Dynex. It's not the best TV out there, but it was only $500 and works quite well! Nice to be able to see my movies in vivid HD... well, unless it's something like Sunrise. :)