Bangers and mash aren't fish and chips

Rating: 6/10 (18 August 2011)

Hey, Brits, if you don't like U-571, why not make your own movie where YOU steal the FICTIONAL German Enigma machine back from the FICTIONAL American sub? I'm sure you would feel a lot better!
Things must be really, REALLY BAD in England if your entire sense of self-worth is wrapped up in rage over a Hollywood movie set more than 60 years ago.
I know things haven't been too good for the United Kingdom since the bumbling appeasement of Adolph Hitler by your democratically elected Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain led to the loss of your colonial empire of unarmed third world countries, but you can't blame America for everything. Don't you have more important things to worry about than a fictional movie about a submarine, like whether it is time to replace David Cameron with someone who knows his ass from his elbow?
Although the story of U-571 is fictional, there was, indeed, a war called World War II, and Americans did, indeed, capture a German sub with an Enigma machine, which doesn't mean that British sailors didn't capture one, too. Germany had lots of subs.
Does anyone in Britain, Mexico, Denmark, etc., know what the term "fiction" means?
If a movie is historically accurate it is called "non-fiction," or sometimes a "documentary" or "re-enactment." A movie that is "FICTION" is, by definition, not historically accurate; it is about something THAT NEVER HAPPENED. U-571 doesn't claim to be true; it is fiction. There was no German U-571. Somebody made this story up; he is called a "writer," for example, Stephen Ambrose. He gets paid to write screenplays that entertain us. A person who writes about history is called a "historian." He gets paid for not making things up, like David McCullough.
Complaining that a fictional movie is not historically accurate is like complaining that pizza is not fried chicken. If you want pizza, order pizza, and don't go complaining to the restaurant after you get it that it's not fried chicken. Or to put it in more Anglo-friendly terms, if you want bangers and mash, don't order fish and chips!
I suspect that a lot of the negative reviews are by people who didn't actually watch the movie, or at least didn't finish watching the movie. They are certainly by people who confuse current events with history, and because they don't like America's recent foreign policy and military actions, they criticize America over fictional movies about World War II. Makes sense to them. I'll bet these people, most likely children, know next to nothing about the real history of World War II. If they did, they wouldn't be confusing a Hollywood adventure film with historical fact.
The British reviewers complain that they were the ones who captured and broke the Enigma machine code, and U-571 hurts their feelings because it shows Americans capturing an Enigma machine.
If you bothered to read anything about the real history of the Enigma machine, you would know that Polish cryptographers were the first to crack the German Enigma code in 1932, and they presented a smuggled Enigma machine along with their code-breaking techniques to the British shortly before WWII started.
If you want to know more about the true history of the Enigma machine and the actual historical capture of submarine Enigma machines, just watch the ending of U-571; it is in text just before the credits. Or try Wikipedia or the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
One of the things you will learn is that the British and the Americans both recovered enigma machines from German subs, including U-505. Yes, Britain, there was more than one Enigma machine in the world.
These incensed reviewers complain about U-571 not being historically accurate, but then they go making up a bunch of patriotic British bosh and posting it as historical fact, when actually they don't know what they're talking about. At least U-571 doesn't claim to be true, unlike these reviewers.
As to the accusation that U-571 is a knock off of Das Boot, well, this must be so because they are both set aboard submarines in WWII and they both begin with farewell parties, though there do seem to be some minor differences, such as that Das Boot was about a German submarine crew, and U-571 was about an American submarine crew, and most of the crew of Das Boot die when they are bombarded by Allied planes.
If you want to see how ridiculous this "But it ain't pizza!" type of reviewing looks, see my review of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - 2005 - the movie.