Comprehensively Disappointing

Rating: 1/10 (28 April 2000)

This movie is an utterly predictable rehash of standard submarine movie conventions. Several of the actors (Bill Paxton and Harvey Keitel, notably) gamely attempt to breathe life in to appallingly hackneyed material, but the go down amidst an avalanche of cliched implausibility. Many scenes are so predictable and formulaic that you can predict them down to small details well in advance(Ohhh, the submarine HAS to go below its rated depth, doesn't it? Time for small leaks, cracking gauges and a pipe bolt being shot across the cabin...) I am no military historian, but many things seemed wildly amiss. In 1942, the German Navy had been largely reduced to commerce raiding and submarine warfare. The idea of a German destroyer, improbably fitted out with hundreds of depth charges for serious anti-submarine warfare, prowling the north Atlantic, seemed quite a stretch. This movie insults your intelligence, and cheats you. Avoid it.