Silly Fictional Submarine Fare.

Rating: 2/10 (2 January 2009)

There really isn't much to be said about this hokey story of an event that never happened during World War II. The movie involves ratty German U-boat sailors, scared but brave and religious American sailors, the capture of a German coding device called Enigma that we already had, impossible triple somersaults in the incidents -- and every submarine cliché in the cinematic code book.
The main plot has an American crew trying to maneuver a damaged U-boat into an Allied port while simultaneously keeping it afloat, causing it to move, avoiding the Germans who are searching frantically for it, and meanwhile being attacked by another German submarine and a German destroyer. I had a bit of trouble keeping that all-American crew straight. They're all blandly even featured, except for Harvey Keitel who definitely is in the wrong movie.
The B story is about the Lieutenant in charge, about his character, about the crew's doubts, about whether or not he has the guts to command and order men to their deaths. (Guess whether he does or not.) The writers, producers, and director have absorbed lessons from other submarine movies, from "Destination Tokyo" to "Das Boot." At one point, the captain has to dive to plutonian depths the U-boat was never designed for and we can watch the arrow on the familiar Tiefenmesser mope its way into the red part of the dial -- and then beyond -- while the hull creaks from the increasing pressure. The men hold onto fittings and gawk at the bulkheads and one of them mutters, "Man, them Krauts sure know how to build 'em." (Cf: KaEl Curt Jurgens' line in "The Enemy Below" under identical circumstances, "They build them good in Germany, huh?") So the hull is creaking and the men are scared to death and the minatory destroyer circles overhead and the only lights are from feeble portable lamps and flashlights and I'm thinking, "Wait a minute! Where are the popping bolts? Where's the squirting water and the shattered glass instruments?" Didn't have long to wait.
To trick the destroyer into believing that the U-boat has sunk, the captain has fuel released from the tanks and shoots some debris from one of the torpedo tubes. The debris includes a dead conveniently body, as in -- which one was it? -- "Run Silent, Run Deep"? You know, the one with Clark Gable? Not that the sleight-of-hand works. If it did, we would be deprived of the thrill of watching the pursuing destroyer blown out of the water with the wounded submarine's lone remaining torpedo.
The clichés never seem to end, and they're not drawn entirely from the submarine genre either. Two men -- one good guy and one bad guy -- are struggling face to face with a pistol between them. A shot is heard. The struggle stops. The good guy wears a shocked expression and backs slowly away. The bad guy smiles slightly -- and then slumps dead to the deck. I'm fairly sure the first time such a scene was presented to the public was in a comedy by Aristophanes.
Where was I? Think I had a period of microsleep there. Anyway, there are thrills galore during the action sequences that seem to comprise half the movie. The cuts are instantaneous. Depth charge patterns yield a dozen explosions in speedy sequence. The camera jiggles. The men dash about, shouting. Lights flash on and off. Sparks fly like the Fourth of July. The chuckling director darts for a second in front of the camera lens and gives the audience the finger. BANG! BOOM! "She's coming apart!"
Want to see a submarine movie you can believe? Rent "Das Boot." Of course "Das Boot" is long, precisely observed, contains some leisure moments that tell us things about individuals, and it has subtitles, so if "U 571" is your kind of movie, "Das Boot" probably is not.