I guess, before we get started, we should address the noisy controversy that surrounded Jonathan Mostow’s World War II submarine like so many exploding depth charges. While pinpoint historical accuracy isn’t exactly an A-1 priority when it comes to a certain kind of war movie, U-571 stepped in a proverbial cowpat when it went ahead with its full-bloodied tale of an American submarine crew fighting for their lives aboard a near-scuttled German U-boat as they battle to capture and deliver an Enigma coding machine.
You see, in 1941, the British crew of the HMS Bulldog managed the same trick seven months before the US even entered the war and a whole three years before the Americans managed to capture one for themselves in a similar fashion. However, that didn’t stop some people seeing the movie as an attempt to, at best, hog all the glory and, at worst, rewrite history and although I’m sure U-571 wasn’t actually an attempt to try either, it didn’t stop it mentioned in – of all places – the House of Commons soon after it release.
However, after stripping all the controversy aside, is U-571 actually a good movie that merely got submerged in all that bad press? Time to take a dive and find out.
After a ocean set scuffle in the middle of the Atlantic, the German U-boat U-571 finds itself crippled and adrift with no mechanics on board who can get its engines fully working again. Sniffing blood in the water after intercepting its distress call, US intelligence immediately throws together to mock up the submarine S-33 to look like a German one and send its bewildered crew out after it in the hope of snagging the Enigma coding device on board.
While the suddenness of the mission has many of the crew rattled, executive officer Lieutenant Tyler is especially at odds with his commanding officer after finding out that he blocked his request to captain his own sub; but any issues that the crew have with one another is rapidly put on the back burner when their mission goes horribly awry. After successful breaching U-571, subduing its crew and scoring the all-important Enigma device, the S-33 is torpedoed by the actual German resupply submarine that it posing as and in the wake of the devastating conflagration, a handful of the surviving Americans find themselves having to escape in the crippled U-571.
For here, things get ever more desperate as the skeleton crew rush to try and get the battered craft vaguely battle ready to limp away in retreat or even turn an fight. But with enemy subs, German destroyers and even a dangerously disruptive prisoner on board standing in their way, Lieutenant Tyler now has the nightmarish opportunity that he has what it takes to lead and make some of the most gut-wrenching decisions he’ll ever have to make.
If you’re one of those people who cant get past the notion that Jonathan Mostow’s sweat and oil covered war time thriller did a massive disservice by not giving credit where credit was due, I totally understand, but if I’m bring honest, realism or accuracy in any genre of movie I sit down and watch has never been particularly high on my list of priorities. To that end, with all the politics shoved to the side, U-571 remains an awesomely edge-of-the-seat experience that mixes the urgency of a classic, men-on-a-mission war movie. In fact the real threat to U-571 isn’t a careless neglect of real-life events, but instead is the fact that it was released a mere five years after Tony Scott’s weighty Crimson Tide, a submarine movie that left quite an insurmountable swell in its impressive wake.
As a result, Mostow’s movie cant help but follow the beats of the submarine movie playbook and dutifully counts them off one by one. Younger XO desperate to prove himself? Yep, that’s there; as is a couple of instances of underwater warfare where torpedoes are readily launched, clocked and exchanged while everyone screams orders. Elsewhere there’s that stock scene where the craft has to endure unbearable depths while the cast stare at bulkheads as they groan like I do when I have to get out of a particularly comfy sofa. However, the movie’s major set piece is the tried and tested sequence where the sub has to try and withstand a seemingly endless barrage of depth charges that rattle the heroic occupants like they’re beans inside a pair of vigourously shaken maracas – but despite the danger of overfamilarity of the dangers that the cast face, Mostow delivers it all with such grim-faced determination, it can’t help but be ruthlessly thrilling.
It also helps that the cast is made up of actors who mostly (at the time, anyway) wasn’t overly familiar. Sure the predictably doomed captain is played by Bill Paxton, the grizzled CPO is played by a stern Harvey Keitel with an ever sterner moustache and Tyler is played by a typically intense Matthew McConaughey before his noughties descent into romcom hell, but the other cast members are filled out with such recognizable face and forgettable names as Thomas Kretschmann, Jake Weber, David Keith, Jack Noteworthy and *checks notes* Jon Bon Jovi – yes, he goes out in a blaze of glory, in case you were wondering.
With its themes of sacrifice and the notion that to command during war time, you have to be willing to give up the lives of young men who have barely lived, U-571 manages to lay down a noticable barrage of exta layers beyond simply twisting us into knots with some well directed, nail biting action and the movie delivers it’s fair share of haunting death be it one poor soul who drowns while still strapped to a stretcher, another who gets obliterated by flying debris and, most upsetting, a crew member who is ordered to make the ultimate sacrifice on the command of a Tyler who finally understands what it means to lead.
Again, whether you truly believe that the film is an “affront to British sailors” (Tony Blair’s words, not mine), then I totally respect your stance, but in the “it’s only a movie stakes”, U-571 proves to be a cracking, capable nail biter that refuses to let up on its iron-gripped tension until the titular sub disappears beneath the waves for a final time. While its firing tubes may admittedly not be loaded with an abundance of originality, the sheer excitement factor prevents this plucky movie from being entirely torpedoed by its swirling controversy.
Definately not sub-par.
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