Better Dead

Rating: 2/10 (16 September 2002)

The best thing about Das Boot, a very suspenseful film, is that in the end all of Hitler's henchmen are killed. That film lies in trying to paint the German submariners as anti-Nazi; in fact the submarine service was the most Nazi of them all, except perhaps for the SS units. In K-19, we don't have the satisfaction of seeing the deaths of all of the henchmen of Stalin, the most vicious mass murderer of them all. Instead we have praise of the "patriotism" of these henchmen and the absolute lie that they saved the world from a nuclear war by preventing the (impossible) detonation of the nuclear warheads aboard the sub. In sum, a truly disgusting and traitorous paen to our country's vicious enemies.