Rub-a-dub-sub

Rating: 7/10 (13 November 2000)

U-571
During World War II, Adolf Hitler's Germans had 1,100 U-Boats in commission in the North Atlantic Ocean. On one of those boats existed a small, typewriter-shaped apparatus called simply Enigma - a code machine with which the Nazis transmitted messages from submarine to submarine.
The boat holding the Enigma is unexpectedly disabled in the middle of the sea. While the crew waits for help from its countrymen, the U.S. covertly approaches it with a mission: board the vessel and obtain the Enigma at all costs. Drafted for this dangerous mission are a group of sailors - not soldiers - led by the redoubtable Lieutenant Andrew Tyler (Matthew McConaughey, his ample locks shorn). But getting on the boat is only half the task, of course. Soon the Americans are stranded on a foreign sub, with all of the instructions and designations written in German! Luckily for them (!) they were wise enough to include in their number a young sailor who speaks fluent German. What're the odds, really? And while they're trying to translate the German post-haste for a dive, they're suddenly in the sights of a German destroyer! Kind of one of those days when you just wish you had not gotten out of bed.
This another popcorn action movie, a white-knuckler that will leave you gripping your chair - our boys are in such peril throughout the movie, and they use up just about every life and chance they have coming to them - that while you know that in the grand Hollywood tradition of the Good Guys winning (and with the knowledge that the Germans did lose the war), you still root and cheer for the sailors to pull through. Plus some really DAZZLING effects, which are even nicer on DVD. Torpedos slam into metal! Subs DIVE DIVE DIVE! The pace is electrifying, if not altogether believable. Pack a lot of MREs for this one!