Flawed but Entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (4 May 2000)

As a fan of the sub-genre (pun intended), I was happy to see this addition. It's no Das Boot and it doesn't break much new ground, but I was entertained all the same. The biggest problem I had with the film was that not enough attention was given to characterization (i.e., the characters are all pretty two-dimensional). You won't care much when some of them die because you hardly had a chance to get to know them.
As for the debate about historical inaccuracies, I'm not sure why the film-makers chose to use an American crew rather than (an historically accurate) British crew but I feel this inaccuracy was addressed at the end of the film with the historical brief which clearly stated that it was the British who retrieved the first Enigma code machine (and a couple others as well). And, as it turns out, an American sub did retrieve an enigma machine and codes later in the war.