Another opinion...

Rating: Null/10 (2 June 2000)

(WARNING: Plot Spoilers Aplenty!)
For probably the first time in my life, I went to see a movie today about which I knew absolutely nothing - had read no reviews, had seen no trailers, hadn't seen any publicity of any kind. I had 2.5 hours to kill, so I went to the nearest cinema and saw whatever was starting. It happened to be U-571. I'd enjoyed all the other sub movies (The Enemy Below, Das Boot, Crimson Tide, Hunt for Red October, etc.) so I settled down to enjoy this one.
Boy, was I disappointed!
Movie-going fans of Star Trek might know that one the best episodes of the original 60s series, "Balance of Terror", was a transposition of the plot and characters of the classic sub movie "The Enemy Below". The two are equally classics of their genre, and both shine primarily because of excellent scripts and some wonderful acting.
By comparison, U-571 ran like a transposition of the corniest elements of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The producers and writers also seem to have borrowed the automatic Star Trek plot-and-script generator.
First we have the baddies (or rather, single baddie), truly evil, with no compassion, humanity or other redeeming characteristics whatsoever (unlike his crewman, who hesitates before firing on the dinghy-load of escapees).

Then we have our hero, dashing and roaring to go, who hasn't been promoted (with a conversation taken straight from several TNG episodes: "you can't take command until you're able to send a man to his death without hesitation").
The moment that scene happened, I knew *exactly* how the film was going to end! Lo and behold, the great denouement is our heroic Lieutenant all but ordering a crewman to sacrifice himself for the mission.

And another exchange straight out of bad militaristic sci-fi: As soon as our hero answers "I don't know" to a question from a crewman, the next scene came as no surprise to me, as the Chief calmly tells him he can't show any weakness in front of his crew.
Plot & Script-by-numbers doesn't begin to describe the awfulness of this movie's approach to story-telling. When the crew discuss the fate of an earlier sub which dived deeper than it was designed to, surely it came as no surprise that our valiant crew would be obliged into just such action? (of course, as our hero is THE Hero, he will survive unscathed...
As a (mild) claustrophobic, one of the reasons I like sub movies is because the enclosed space remains a theme throughout well-made movies of the genre. This one had no such feeling (yes, the cramped spaces were shown, but we the audience had no actual feel for it!)
OK, the SFX were exemplary and the set pieces weren't bad. But the utter monotony with which they appeared in sequence like an old jigsaw puzzle one can put together in one's sleep (the original skipper's death, the argument over whether to fire or not to fire, the cat-and-mouse game with the German destroyer dropping depth charges, the blocked torpedo tube), the ham-fisted acting from the experienced members of the cast who should have known better, and that music rising to crescendi of cheap emotion to make up for the lack of direction, acting or cinematography when filming human beings, left me desperately wanting to get home to pull Das Boot off the shelf and watch a submarine war movie that knew what it was doing, filmed by a director who knew how to direct and written with a little flair and originality. Three people sitting in front of me in the half-empty cinema had the right idea: they walked out after an hour of this cliche'd rubbish.

And I won't even go into the historical inaccuracies, slightly corrected by the "tribute" at the end of the film.
If I had to give this film a score out of ten, I'll be generous in awarding it a 3.