Typically Hollywood

Rating: 4/10 (11 January 2005)

U-571 is a terrible film that everybody who values great movies like "Das Boot" from director Wolfgang Petersen should avoid watching. It is nothing more than an America-saves-the-world kind of movie which is overloaded with action and the typical Hollywood film music. It completely lacks historical objectivity and the characters are superficial hero's who have a difficult time showing realistic emotion.
Let's put things in perspective here: An Enigma Code machine was never captured. Not by the British and certainly not by the Americans. In reality over a 1000 English scientists had been working for more than a year before they were able to crack the code. The movie is indeed full of twists and turns. In fact, the movie is so full of action that it can not be taken seriously. The scenes that were supposed to be the best scenes of the movie were nothing more than colorless copies of the most beautiful scenes of "Das Boot". But even in the proces of copying mistakes were made: depth bombs are exploding extremely close to the sub without causing much damage. The crew tries to look scared but there's no claustrophobia. Then there is this scene in which the American sailors have to dive with the German sub. They're all in a panic because they do not know how to operate the boat. First they state that there are no instructions on the machinery, then they claim that it's all written in German? All this takes about a minute and suddenly nothing seems so be a problem anymore?! In another scene they are confronted with a German destroyer that pops out of the sky and is easily defeated with one single gun hit in the radio hut. In reality German commanders as well as their crews were known and feared for their expertise. No German battleship would ever have been defeated so easily.
All in all U-571 is a typical piece of Hollywood crap. Everything that makes "Das Boot" beautiful is missing in U-571. There's no great acting, there's no claustrophobia. So don't watch it, unless you are looking for a flick to fill up your time while you're eating popcorn.