The version of Wolfgang Petersen's classic Das Boot now arriving in your neighborhood multiplexes is a new director's cut of the version of 1982 which adds over an hour of original footage to bring the film to an epic three and a half hours in length. The time flies. This is perhaps the best war movie ever made, capturing as it does both the excitement, the adventure, and the glory of war on the one hand, and the terror and horror of it on the other.
Film begins in a French nightclub during a drunken bacchanalia.
The ordinary sailors make rude gestures, insult and even urinate on their officers as the latter make their way by car to the club. No one thinks too much about it. They make him feel old, the captain confides. He feels as if he is leading a children's crusade. The atmosphere on board is one of anti-heroism and admiration for the British.