Really good WW II submarine film, great picture and sound for DVD home theater buffs.

Rating: Null/10 (21 April 2001)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** "U-571" is the fictional German U-boat in this story, set in the north Atlantic in 1942. The basic premise are the several "allied" boats which recovered German message encoders which helped win the war. This is a fictional account of one of them.
The human interest story is the young officer Tyler, played by Matthew McConaughey, who had just been passed over for a "captain" assignment, because his commander, played by Bill Paxton, didn't think he was "ready", including being able to sacrifice some of his men to save a mission. So, you very quickly realize that taking command and sacrificing his men will become part of the script.
The movie starts with the sub U-571 being attacked and damaged, and a fire kills all the mechanics, so they cannot get the boat running. They use the encoder to send a secret mesage to get help. The Allies pick up the location of the transmission and figure out it is a U-boat and send an American sub dressed up as a german sub to get there first, with plans to capture the encoder and sink the sub so the Germans won't be wise to the deed.
The plans go awry, the American sub is sunk, Paxton is killed, "Tyler" becomes the de facto captain of the injured U-571 and attempts to get to Greenland for safety. The American mechanic gets one set of engines running well. The one German survivor, their captain, is chained up but still manages to wreak near havoc until they "wrench" him! But the German destroyer figures out what is happening, uses depth charges to further damage the U-571, "Tyler" hatches a plan to outsmart them, and finally gets their last torpedo on target. As the story ends an American airplane spots them and rescue is near. "Tyler" becomes the captain that he wanted to be. In a somewhat syrupy scene, Harvey Keitel's character said, "I'd go to sea with you anytime."
The DVD has both DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 selectable sound tracks. I wasn't able to notice any difference between the two. The surround sound really puts you in the middle of the action, and the explosions, all 38,751 of them, are very realistic. The picture color and sharpness are without flaw.
My wife and I found the film very entertaining. To those few critics who think this film is not historically accurate, see the DVD "extras". They used experienced WW II submariners as consultants, and built the sets very accurately. The story itself is fictional, and fiction is "fiction", so portrayed events are not intended to be real. For total enjoyment with a somewhat predictable story I rate it "7" of 10.