If life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade, right? So what happens if life hands you a kumquat
If life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade, right? So what happens if life hands you a kumquat
Member since:21.10.2000
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Right, let's get one thing absolutely clear - British forces captured the Enigma encoding machine from a German sub during WWII, not the Americans.
This blatant disregard for historical accuracy has been U-571's biggest downfall here in the UK - show me a review that doesn't mention it - and no matter how good the film actually turned out to be, this oversight on the makers part would become the single factor which prevented it from repeating it's US box-office success over here. Which is a shame because once you've fought your way through all the arguing and flag-waving, U-571 emerges as an efficient, well-made action-adventure that should provide two hours of solid entertainment for all but the most dedicated of nationalists.
The premise is a simple one, during the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942 an Enigma coding machine comes up for grabs when a German U-boat - the U-571 - with one of the devices on board is attacked and damaged by allied forces. When the stricken U-boat signals for help, the message is intercepted by our American friends and a search and recovery mission is hastily assembled. Why?Because the Enigma is a device which can send, scramble, recieve and unscramble tactical military transmissions. Capturing and deciphering one of these machines would play a key role in turning the entire war in the allies favour.
So, during a slow and at times clunky, opening thirty minutes we are introduced to our heroic crew, which for the most part consists of your typical submarine-movie stereotypes
- the seawise captain (Bill Paxton), the hot-shot executive officer (Matthew McConaughey), the interfering special-services man (David Keith) and a handful of fresh-faced nobody's who you just know are going to die. Once all of the formalities are out of the way though, and we set sail with our boys, the film starts to gather a few knots and things start to look interesting. Following an exciting, bullet-ridden but successful takeover of the German sub everything seems to be going swimmingly for our boys until, literally out of the blue, things take an explosive turn for the worse and a handful of the crew (led by McConaughey) end up stranded on the wounded U-boat with another enemy sub hot on their keels. This is where the scheizen really hits the fan, for not only is U-571 low on power and short of weapons, all the controls are in German and the enemy forces have cottoned on to their game. From hereon in it's action-central as McConaughey & Co encounter torpedoes, depth-charges, enemy destroyers (well, one!) and a whole lotta leaks in their quest to return to American soil with their precious cargo intact. Not surprisingly, U-571 is packed to the portholes with cliches - pinging sonars, popping rivets and bursting pipes etc.. but writer/director Jonathan Mostow (Breakdown) makes the the most of them, realising (correctly) that no submarine adventure would be complete without them.
Apart from the obvious historical goof, U-571 is drenched in authenticity - the onboard procedures of the crew, the costumes, the sets and, of course the full-size, sea-going submarine itself are a credit to the production and all help to boost the tension levels considerably.
The performances are fine - McConaughey is his usual noble self, Jack Noseworthy is amiable enough as a German-speaking sonarman and Harvey Keitel adds some weight to the largely unknown, twenty-something cast as the grey-bearded old sea-dog. Sadly, the screenplay requires them to do little more than run around shouting and any fleshing-out of these characters was either trimmed in post-production due to "running time constraints", or simply not bothered with. As a result it's difficult to feel any kind of empathy for our heroes, unlike Wolfgang Petersen's classic "Das Boot" where you're with them every nerve-stretching inch of the way.
I was determined to get a joke about "sub-plots" in this review somewhere, but U-571 doesn't have any - what you see is what you get, and that is a straight-forward, WWII adventure with exciting, realistic action and great special effects - enough to keep most thrill-seekers happy for a couple of hours.
3 stars for the film.
U-571 is available on both region 1 and region 2 DVD, but, as usual, the region 1 disc is far superior. It's one of Universal's Collector's Edition DVD's, meaning that it comes with a veritable boatload of extra features. Director Mostow clearly played a huge part in the making of this DVD, personally introducing as he does the majority of the numerous featurettes. He also goes some way to making up for the film's casual treatment of it's historical content, in one the best features he interviews Lt. Commander David Balme - the *British* sailor who actually did board a German U-boat and capture an Enigma Machine. A jolly old chap he is too. Further featurettes include an interview with a genuine US submarine commander, an interview with a cryptologist about how the Enigma actually worked, naval archive footage of the real capture of U-505 and two reasonably in-depth (ho ho) documentaries on the making of the movie. Add to this a commentary from Mostow, trailer, production notes, cast & crew profiles, DVD-ROM material, and a recommendations page with further hidden trailers, all bound together with slick animated menus. The icing on the cake however comes with the inclusion of a stunning DTS audio track as well as the already impressive Dolby Digital 5.1 track - audio heaven and a big "Yah-Boo" to all those studios who claim that DTS audio takes up too much disc space.
One of the best single-disc packages around and a full 5 stars.
Like the titular submarine however, the U-571 DVD seems to have taken some severe damage in it's trans-Atlantic crossing. Released by Entertainment in Video in the UK, the region 2 disc comes without the DTS soundtrack and minus one of the "making of" documentaries. Also wave goodbye to the production notes, cast & crew information, DVD-ROM content and the animated menus. The box it comes in isn't as stylish either. Worse still, the film's original 2.35-1 aspect ratio has been chopped down to 1.85-1 - What madness is this? Why not re-master it in black & white while you're at it? True, a 1.85-1 image will fit on your widescreen telly with no black bars at the top and bottom, but this is wrong! The film was shot in the wider "panavision" format and altering it for UK viewers is nothing short of an insult.
If the powers-that-be in the film world really want to stem the flow of imported region 1 discs, then UK distributors are going to have to start doing better than this - and schnell!
3 stars for the region 2 DVD.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
As elspeth334 points out, they do try and make amends at the end of the film with a tiny written credit to the Brits for actually doing what was portrayed in the film.
In defence of EIV I should also point out that they are some of the cheapest DVDs around. £9.99 if you know where to look on the Internet and '3 for £25' at Comet not so long ago!
pakalang 31.03.2001 04:54
nice pict howie!! love the shirt.. lol!! so, when can we expect more dvd reviews then? cheers :)
minxette 27.03.2001 00:19
Really must get round to watching this...great op...Kerry
If you've never seen a submarine drama before, thenU-571will probably make a good ... more
impression as a tautly choreographed piece of entertainment. A strong cast led by Matthew McConaughey's sympathetic Lt. Tyler undertakes a perilous mission to seize a Ger...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
If you've never seen a submarine drama before, thenU-571will probably make a good ... more
impression as a tautly choreographed piece of entertainment. A strong cast led by Matthew McConaughey's sympathetic Lt. Tyler undertakes a perilous mission to seize a Ger...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
From the creators of the hit thriller 'Breakdown', comes Canal+ and Universal Pictures' ... more
U-571. A white-knuckle World War II suspense drama, about an American submarine crew as they battle against time, danger and their own fears. Their mission: a darin...
If you've never seen a submarine drama before, thenU-571will probably make a good ... more
impression as a tautly choreographed piece of entertainment. A strong cast led by Matthew McConaughey's sympathetic Lt. Tyler undertakes a perilous mission to seize a Ger...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
![U-571 [DVD] [2000]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78522839.jpg "U-571 [DVD] [2000]")
![U-571 [DVD] [2000] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/69887853.jpg "U-571 [DVD] [2000] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]")
Mar 15th, 2001
(Feb 14th, 2002)
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