Who's the Hero?

Rating: 3/10 (28 September 2013)

With only a few minor changes, this could have been a suspenseful thriller about a heroic German U-boat captain trying to take his vessel back from the Americans who have captured it, after slaughtering his crew. He's so sympathetic in his first scene -- and the Americans are so unlikable -- that I imagine the filmmakers must have panicked. They threw in a "kick the dog" moment, of the German captain ordering the massacre of a lifeboat full of people, just so the audience would know who was meant to be the villain.
This kind of thing happens in war movies all the time. The Americans -- led by Matthew McConaughey and Harvey Keitel -- trick their way onto the U-boat and shoot just about everyone they run into. This is supposed to be heroic, because these are supposed to be the good guys. The German captain manages to hide out, and makes several attempts to sabotage the boat. This is supposed to be villainous, because he's the bad guy.
Of course, the real trouble with this sort of stark morality is that the entire film is a fabrication of the screenwriters. The situation is an invention, the characters are fictional, and every action is calculated for maximum effect. U-boat crews were not known for any cruelty beyond that exhibited by the Allied submariners, and yet the makers of this movie were compelled to upgrade their historical villain into a really nasty character. The point of all this is to make an exciting action movie -- it's not a documentary, right?
But then why is it a historical movie at all? Why bother making movies set in historical periods if you're just going to ignore the details? Nearly sixty years passed between the war and the movie -- so why not use the opportunity to educate the audience about what really happened, rather than simply aiming to excite them with tired clichés?
Well, apart from all that, it actually is quite an exciting ride. The camera never stops moving and things never stop exploding -- and Matthew McConaughey apparently never stops shouting. McConaughey makes a great villain, but this movie designates him as the hero -- the same way most stupid action movies do.