Even better when seen on a boat.

Rating: Null/10 (22 August 2000)

U-571 was an enjoyable thriller, with many moments of high tension. The action never let up, but was not of the usual predictable, 'oh well, here comes another explosion/fist fight/gun battle. The impression of the men being trapped with very few options was very well presented, and events appeared with suddenness and ferocity. All of the performances were strong and quite believable, but there were moments of male bonding where you could almost hear the producers saying 'we need a close scene here, where the characters can learn from each other'; you could almost taste the testosterone. Other than that I felt that the music score was intrusive at times, and would have been more potent if used sparingly.
Of the fact it is an American team that did the rescuing of the enigma, much has already been said, but if this was accepted as a film, rather than an historical document, then I am happy to enjoy it. The enigma was only ever a plot device to make the mission urgent, and the stakes high. If the film had intimated that the codebreakers were a bunch of American academics holed up somewhere in America, and had invented a programmable computer to solve the problem, then I might have got more upset. Few realistic moviegoers get cross when cowboy films mangle historical fact to make a good story, so why bother about a war fantasy?
On the plus side, we watched the film on a ferry from Spain to Portsmouth. The gentle rolling of the boat, and the vibration of the engines, really made the whole experience much more intense!