Less Than Meets the Eye

Rating: 2/10 (14 May 2000)

U-571 is the kind of film that seems original to people who've never seen a submarine movie before. The picture has cliches that were hairy during World War II, an over-active camera that gets in the way of the few good performances and makes some scenes almost totally incoherent and a script so leaden they could have put it in the ballast tanks to make the sub sink.
Worst things about the picture: 1) the script giving the U.S. credit for cracking the Enigma Code when it was principally a British endeavor, particularly the decoding, but then, they don't make summer action flicks about gay British mathematicians; 2) the attack on the U.S. sub, so poorly shot and edited it's hard to tell who's killed and who survived (not helped by a cast of young actors who all look alike in their World War II haircuts).
Best things about the picture: 1) Harvey Keitel, an acting god given the kind of dialogue Hollywood used to stick William Bendix with and, like the much underrated Bendix, he still makes it work (let's just hope nobody decides to star him in a big-screen version of "The Life of Riley"; 2) Jack Noseworthy, who's developing the kind of eyes and cheekbones that stars are made of. Noseworthy is dead-on in every scene as the German-American farm boy who's ashamed of his heritage. Unfortunately, most fans are mistaking him for Jon Bon Jovi (who has a few scenes as an officer then vanishes without a trace during the big sub attack). Hopefully Hollywood's casting directors won't make the same mistake.