Quite entertaining

Rating: 6/10 (7 August 2002)

An American submarine crew sets out to capture a disabled German U-boat in order to steal the enigma coding machine away from it...
With a plot starting like that, one knows what to expect: exaggerated bravery on the part of the Americans, treacherousness on the part of the Germans, lots of explosions, sadness over the death of a crew mate, heroical speeches in critical times, and a romance. Well, this movie contains most of the clichés of its genre, but it doesn't indulge into them too deeply. For starters, there isn't any love story !
We are immediately thrown into the action, which more or less manages to sustain itself throughout the movie. There is one major subplot, about the captain who still needs to prove himself worthy to command a submarine. But of course he passes each test imposed upon his commanding abilities with great splendor, with the coaching of veteran Harvey Keitel.
During their hazardous journey, the crew will encounter another German U-boat, a reconnaissance aircraft and a torpedo hunter, while they are at the same time hindered from the inside by a renegade German crew member from the first U-boat. The biggest merit of this movie is that all those events follow each other rapidly, without the tension being broken down by tedious discussions in between.
A few scenes are annoying because of their simplistic portrayal of the good guys versus the bad guys. Throughout the movie it seems to be a scientific fact that anything which contains Germans can be blown to smithereens with one single, well-aimed shot. The U-boat in which the Americans flee, however, immediately receives some kind of Divine protection, effectively shielding it from torpedoes and tons of depth charges.
And then there was this obligatory, but totally superfluous scene in which the Germans show how evil they really are. You probably know this cliché: in order to make it acceptable for the heroes of a movie to mercilessly slaughter the bad guys, the script writers always work in a scene in which the antagonists ruthlessly and without provocation murder a bunch of innocent and mostly unarmed people. In this case, the already damaged first U-boat encounters a lifeboat full of survivors from a sunken ship, who seek refuge on the submarine. Unfortunately, they hadn't taken into account the blood-lust of the screenplay authors...
But all in all the pace of the action is quite fast, and doesn't give the viewer a lot of time to even get irritated at some clichés or inconsistencies. And Harvey Keitel keeps the acting on the level. So as an action movie I would rate this a 7/10, minus one for the seemingly unavoidable American patriotism: 6/10.