Fires All Tubes!

Rating: 7/10 (27 May 2019)

Forget the history aspect and just accept that this is a completely fictitious story, which it is. In this way you are far more likely to enjoy the very entertaining and suspenseful U-571. Factual accuracy is not a strong point of this film. What is a strong point however is the clever and unorthodox employment of typical submarine film genre tropes, to create a tense, absorbing war drama, with plenty of action and unexpected twists.
The U - 571 is a World War II German submarine boarded by American submariners to capture her Enigma cipher machine. In an extended prologue we see her and her crew attacking an Allied convoy in the Atlantic Ocean, but sustaining badly damaged engines in escaping. A distress call for assistance from the German Navy is intercepted by American naval intelligence, who hatch a plan to use the crew of American sub S-33 to try to steal the Enigma machine coding device and sink the U-571 through subterfuge, before German assistance arrives on the scene.
Matthew McConaughey is Lieutenant Andrew Tyler the ambitious, but socially popular XO of the S-33, skippered by the ever reliably stoic Bill Paxton playing Lieutenant Commander Mike Dahlgren. But the talented cast list, like the submarines, is long and deep. There is plenty of well choreographed and photographed action both above and below the ocean surface and in and out of various submarines. Challengers to survival for the S-33 crew arrive from depth charge, cannon and other torpedo attacks, as well as those caused by onboard fires and explosions, the machinations of untrustworthy prisoners and even a possible mutiny amongst various sailors.
While there have been better war films over the years, U-571 is a well-paced, stirring and at times exhilarating adventure that never lets up from start to cessation of action. Worth putting your shoulder to the wheel for this one.