Jan. 06, 2003 - 2:40 pm
this one was a recommendation from numerous family members, and i believe the first film that my grandfather has ever handed to me and said "here, you should watch this" before. although more people seem to be doing that in general lately since they know about this diary and as you know, i always enjoy having new good movies suggested. i seriously do run out of things that i want to see sometimes. you can probably imagine how that would happen watching at least one film on average per day. anyway, this film is your standard submarine movie. i hate to generalize, but my earnest belief is that if you have seen one submarine movie, you have seen them all. it's not really a bad format. it's exciting at points definitely, and very dramatic. but as far as lasting value, nah not really.
as i say, this is a submarine film. it's also completely fictional. if you want more details than that, well the basic interesting aspect of this one is that it's sort of a spy mission. the crew of an old navy sub leave port posing as a rescue sub from the German side. they're going out to the U-571, a German u-boat, which has been crippled in a sea battle, and will pose as another German sub in order to attain a critical coding machine that will aid the Allies in decoding German communications. when they get there, they eventually get the machine, but their own ship gets blown up while they're onboard the U-571. from then on they have to try and escape with the coding machine, their lives, and all the while using a boat that is already on its last leg.
the one thing i could say about the other sub films i've seen this year (see Das Boot (1981) and K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)) is that they at least were based on true stories. the fact that this one is fictional makes it seem completely unoriginal to me. there is nothing in this film that improves upon the story of Das Boot, and i think Americans would tend to enjoy this more simply because it has an all-star American cast. if you can get past the whole fear and dislike of Germany thing, you might consider watching Das Boot. now that film is not perfectly stunning either, but i think it was done better and had more original thought in it than this film. also, the true story aspect really matters to me in this instance.
all in all though, i think i am done with the submarine genre of films. this is my last one, barring anything that comes out in the future with at least a preview that shows me something new. this is my requiem mass for the submarine film.