Banal

Rating: 3/10 (9 October 2000)

If the intent was to make a maritime follow-up to Saving Private Ryan, the producers of this film miscalculated in a big way. Compared to SPR, U-571 loses in about every category.
The writing was banal. I didn't care when the men died. With the possible exception of "Trigger," they just died. Mostow didn't give us the sense that these men had something to live for or that they died for something worthy dying for.
The direction was uninspired. During the standard (and by now trite) submarine-diving-below-specified-limits scene, the rivet popping and pipe bursting shots were no different than any of a hundred other submarine films.
The acting was flat. On this point, I will confess a predisposition against Matthew McConaughey. I find his southern accent affected, and his delivery inappropriate to the character's situation. Keitel and Paxton were better, but overall I sensed that there was a big casting problem among this ensemble: they didn't look or act like it was the 1940s. If heroes are ordinary men who do extraordinary things in extraordinary times, these guys weren't heroes...they were just guys.