U-571 (2000)

I remember first trying to watch this tripe when it first was released & then only managed 25-30 minutes,it was mind numbing stupid & just something annoying & incromprehensible about McConaughey.Well twas on recently & tried to watch again & it hasn't got any better there are so many inconceivably ridiculous things let the actuality of the event.Just to name a few a bunch of u.s. navy guys that cant speak or read a word of german take over a german u boat get chased by a destroyer the likes of which have never been seen,because it's a tug boat,& blow it out of the water with one extremely lucky shot.Before that they're releasing oil,debris & a body with a vest on before the depth charges are even released & a vest aint gonna help you when you're getting blown out of a sub at 100 or metres but nah the germans 'bought it'.Theres so many more ridiculously stupid things its almost a comedy this & pearl harbour just suck this is definitely total rubbish

Apparently everyone who reviewed this movie expected to see a historically accurate movie in every respect. Nowhere did the makers say it was an accurate portrayal of an actual event on any particular U Boat or any actual patrol. The film was made in the USA to make money, not be a historically 100% accurate film about any Nazi U boat. As far as whether the US Navy ever captured a U boat, yes they did on June 4, 1944. They arrested the crew and got the enigma machine which was sent to Bletchley Park England. The boat U 505 was then towed the boat to Bermuda. It now sits in Chicago at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. The US under the Lend-Lease Program gave the United Kingdom $31.4 billion (equivalent to $427 billion today) during WW 2. I guess that was a mistake according to most respondants here I see. Perhaps the US should have stayed out of Europe and let France and England defeat Hitler by themselves while we took on Japan.

This movie uses great effects and realistic settings, but the rest is fantastic superhuman nonsense. The U-571 was never captured by Americans and was sunk with all hands off the coast of Ireland by British aircraft, so I hope nobody gets his history from this. The Germans were furthermore quite humane when treating survivors in the sea, and while they could not take them on board, they rarely shot them all or deliberately killed them. The German navy commander Karl Dönitz was not found guilty of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials. In fact, in 1942 the captain of U-156 tried to rescue survivors from a sunken British ship after radioing the allies, only to be attacked by American bombers which killed many of the survivors on the deck of the U-boat and forced it to dive, which killed the rest. The allies often killed German sailors who survived sunken U- boats or left them to die even when they could have saved them. This film is also short on realism. The German movie Das Boot was criticized by former U-boat sailors for its portrayal of depth charges being too close to the U-boat and not sinking it. Well, this movie had the depth charges a lot closer, the hull shaking like crazy, yet no rupture or major leaks occur. Depth charges don't have to hit the craft; they're designed to cause a crack or dent in the hull, and water pressure does the rest. Machine guns that fired from a German destroyer were enough to compromise the hull's integrity, but the boat still dives beyond its accepted limit after all that with no problems. The ability of a handful of men to operate a damaged foreign U-boat to achieve all these deeds and still survive to tell the tale is about as fantastic and unrealistic as you can get. It's a propaganda film with all its cheesy music, of pure good us versus pure evil them, and a pretty unconvincing one.

While this film stirred some controversy regarding its portrayal of history, particular in the media in the UK, this needs to be totally ignored and there was a complete lack of understanding that this was a work of FICTION. Some of the hysteria around the release was to be frank, totally irrelevant and the focus needed to be on whether the film was any good or not as a story.So, as a old fashioned adventure film, it's very good indeed. The film's plot is simple and straightforward, helped a lot by portraying both the American and German sailors in a rounded and grounded way. Performances are solid all round, with Matthew McConnaughey in good form as the lead, with excellent support from both Jack Noseworthy, Jake Weber and Harvey Keitel in supporting roles. The script by Director Mostow, Sam Montgomery and writer/director David Ayer is lean allows that action to zip along at breakneck speed, supported greatly by excellent and authentic directing on the part of Mostow and excellent photography by Oliver Wood. Wayne Wahrman's outstanding editing, convincing production design with Richard Marvin's thunderously rousing score helps create a thrilling and exciting experience full of tension. Kudos also need to go the to the visual effects crew, who make excellent use of life size submarines and truly excellent sets, to highly effective underwater miniature photography. However this film's biggest technical credit is the excellent atmosphere created by the excellent sound work, with Jon Johnson winning an Academy Award for his sound editing. His work contributes massively to creating a genuinely real and claustrophobic atmosphere aboard the submarines that feature in the story, and helps put the viewer in the action. He had already worked on a number of high profile films prior to winning the Oscar, including Star Trek Generations, Independence Day, Breakdown (Mostow's previous film as director), and Payback. Subsequent to U571 he would go on to work on other high profile pictures such as A Knight's Tale, The Rookie, Amazing Grace, Captain American, Saving Mr Banks, The Blind Side and Surrogates – yet another collaboration with Jonathan Mostow. If there are any quibbles, the way the core crew get out of an initial rendezvous with an enemy destroyer does stretch credibility. The fact that a supply submarine would still have space to carry torpedoes also comes as a bit of a surprise, as does the use of a spotter plane that looks suspiciously like a short range Messchermitt (which you would never find out in the middle of the Atlantic – or a German destroyer for that matter – Germany only tended to send it large battleships into this region). However the fun and enjoyment of the film will grab you to will tend to overlook any flaws. So in summary if you just accept and experience it as a work of fiction, you will have a great time