U-571 This is for the movie U-571. This movie is pretty much what you'd expect, a fun action movie that takes place under water. Most would scream "Das Boot rip off!", and well, you're pretty much correct. This movie is about a young crew of US submariners who end up on the run from the enemy, in (gasp) enemy waters.

The story does have an interesting historical twist though. The premise is that they are on a mission to capture an "enigma" decoding device from the Germans. Obtaining one of these would turn the tide of war, give them access to encoded German transmissions, etc etc. To do this they impersonate a U-boat to meet up with another, take control of the vessle (by killing everyone on it), get the enigma device and scuttle the ship. Sadly, as things go in movies like this their own ship is blown out of the water and the crew, sans captain, is stuck in a German U-Boat in enemy water.

You can see how this is a problem.

The story is pretty predictable, with a few twists toward the end. The focus charcterwise (IMHO) was at the star of the show, Matthew McConaughey, who not only has the most wacky spelling of a last name, but also is the 1st officer (the XO) of the US sub. With the captain dead he must take control and become a captain to his men.

Part of the story is how he goes from being unable to have control of a boat (at the beginning of the story it is explained how he didn't pass the captain's test and get his own command) to having to, and via trial by fire, transforms from a weenie into a "true captain".

This borrows heavily as I said, from Das Boot, and is pretty predictable, including it's overly American skew (could you make the "US" insignia on the wing of the Catalina at the end any more obvious????), but a fun ride. Posted by Arcterex at May 02, 2000 03:53 PM