U-571
USA 1999
Reviewed by Tom Tunney
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
1942, the Atlantic ocean. The German submarine U-571 is disabled by a British warship. The U-boat's radio request for assistance is intercepted by the US Navy. Impersonating a German rescue sub, an American submarine draws alongside U-571 and a heavily armed boarding party led by Lt Tyler and Major Coonan secure the enemy vessel and its top-secret Enigma coding machine. While they are on board, a German rescue submarine torpedoes the US vessel. Ship's steward Eddie and one German prisoner survive and are dragged aboard U-571.
Tyler and his skeleton crew hastily prepare U-571 for action and destroy the enemy sub. Heading for England, the submarine encounters a German warship and dives. While the submarine is being depth charged, the German captive breaks free and attempts to wreck the engine room. Recaptured, he is executed when the crew realise he has been banging Morse code messages to the warship on the side of the hull.
U-571 has only one chance to destroy the enemy vessel. Crewman Trigger swims outside the hull and successfully makes vital repairs before drowning. Tyler fires his last torpedo and destroys the warship. The Americans abandon the sinking U-571 and, with the Enigma machine, take to a raft.
Review
U-571 is loosely inspired by a fascinating incident in May 1941 in which a German U-boat was forced to the surface in the waters of the mid-Atlantic by a Royal Navy warship. Boarding the U-boat, a British naval team secured a major coup for the Allies by chancing upon an Enigma coding machine, the top-secret device used by the German military to send encoded messages.
For U-571's director Jonathan Mostow (Breakdown) the fact that the Enigma machine was secured more through luck than any planned operation poses certain dramatic problems. The real-life event lacks narrative drive and a consistent, controlling hero. More importantly for his film's US box-office prospects, there weren't any Americans involved in the action. His unambitious screenplay thus seeks to reshape the incident along the lines of such formulaic submarine adventure movies as Crimson Tide and The Hunt for Red October.
On these terms, U-571 is an efficient enough exercise. Sharply edited and vigorously directed and performed, the claustrophobic action scenes have a manic momentum to them - the sequence in which the Americans row slowly across to the enemy vessel is especially suspenseful. The underwater special effects are generally excellent; booming sound effects milk the dramatic power of the sundry exploding depth charges for all their worth and, as with Saving Private Ryan, the colour photography (by Oliver Wood) convincingly emulates the rich lustre of genuine World War II footage. The film also recalls Ryan in an extended close-quarter struggle between the US sailors and the Nazi U-boat captive, proving once again that it's always a bad idea in Hollywood war films to let the prisoner live.
But in playing out Hollywood's favourite war-movie scenario by presenting a few individuals operating against the odds, U-571 blithely ignores historical fact. The waters of the Atlantic are erroneously depicted as wholly dominated by the German military - German aircraft and surface warships roam at will, while Allied back-up units are notable only by their absence (for a corrective view see The Cruel Sea, 1952, and Sink the Bismarck!, 1960). Isolated and continually under threat, the U-boat's stoic, inclusive and self-reliant US crew - including Harvey Keitel's Chief Klough (a role that brings to mind Star Trek's resourceful Scottie) and Eddie, the token black crewman (the US Navy was rigidly segregated and racism was endemic at the time) - is a comic-book embodiment of American heroic ideals. The film focuses on a group of exclusively American heroes, operating in a historical and military vacuum; and the German captive - a villainous, unscrupulous murderer - seems to function solely as a justification for the US sailors' acts of brutality. By contrast, the surviving Nazi U-boat captain in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) is by far the strongest character in the film; the Allies have to learn to be ruthless to dispose of him.
Keeping their crew cut off from help and in perpetual danger - U-571 is, at times, like an underwater version of The Alamo (1960) - screenwriters Mostow, Sam Montgomery and David Ayer run into dramatic problems, too. Little more than a succession of discrete action sequences, their script depends on plot devices that grow increasingly implausible as the film progresses (the idea that such a skeleton crew could man a vessel they've never sailed before; repairs being made to the outside of the submarine while it's still underwater, and so on). Even U-571's opening premise raises questions: if the US Navy can locate a German submarine so easily, why does it need the Enigma machine to break the U-boat code in the first place?
Credits
- Director
- Jonathan Mostow
- Producers
- Dino De Laurentiis
- Martha De Laurentiis
- Screenplay
- Jonathan Mostow
- Sam Montgomery
- David Ayer
- Story
- Jonathan Mostow
- Director of Photography
- Oliver Wood
- Editor
- Wayne Wahrman
- Production Designers
- Wm Ladd Skinner
- Götz Weidner
- Music
- Richard Marvin
- ©Universal Studios
- Production Companies
- Studio Canal+/Universal Pictures present in association with Dino De Laurentiis
- Executive Producer
- Hal Lieberman
- Line Producer
- Lucio Trentini
- Production Supervisor
- Roberta Y. Shintani
- Production Co-ordinators
- Hilde Odelga
- Malta:
- Rita Galea
- 2nd Unit:
- Norma Marie Mascia
- Unit Production Manager
- Stefano Spadoni
- Unit Managers
- Mario Francini
- 2nd Unit:
- T. David Pash
- Set Managers
- Gianfranco De Rosa
- 2nd Unit:
- Marco Albertini
- Production Liaison
- Carla Ferroni
- Franca Tasso
- Astrid M. Gotuzzo
- Michael Lichtenegger
- Post-production Supervisor
- Teresa Kelly
- 2nd Unit Director
- M. James Arnett
- Assistant Directors
- Juan Carlos Rodero
- Alberto Mangiante
- Inti Carboni
- 2nd Unit:
- Luca Lachin
- Yozo Takuda
- Pascal Vaguelsy
- Script Supervisors
- Dianne Dreyer
- 2nd Unit:
- Cheryl Starbuck
- Casting
- Carol Lewis
- Associate:
- Sara Lewis
- Europe:
- Kate Dowd
- Gail Stevens
- Italy:
- Shaila Rubin
- 2nd Unit Director of Photography
- Rexford Metz
- Camera Operators
- Daniele Massaccesi
- Gian Maria Majorana
- 2nd Unit:
- Fabio Zamarion
- Visual Effects
- Supervisor:
- Peter Donen
- Producer:
- David Dwiggins
- Co-ordinator:
- Henric Nieminen
- Director of Photography:
- Mario Bagnato
- Camera Operator:
- Aldo Chessari
- Special Effects Supervisor:
- Richard Helmer
- Model Makers:
- Robert Bonillas
- Rick Holman
- Kenneth Quilicot
- Ron Peake
- Gilbert Correa
- John Ramsey
- Jaime Manca Di Villahermosa
- Visual Effects
- Cinesite
- Special Effects Supervisor
- Allen Hall
- Graphics
- Gianmarco Maglione
- Supervising Art Director
- Robert Woodruff
- Art Directors
- Marco Trentini
- Maria Teresa Barbasso
- Set Designers
- Gina B. Cranham
- Eric Sundahl
- Gregory Scott Hooper
- Joseph G. Pacelli Jr
- Alessandro Santucci
- Giulia Chiara Crugnola
- Daniela Giovannoni
- Richard Skinner
- Set Decorators
- Bob Gould
- Cinzia Sleiter
- Production Illustrators
- Alessandro Luciano
- Robert H. Branham
- Storyboard Artists
- Karen Wilson
- Eric Ramsey
- Sculptor
- Galliano Donati
- Costume Designer
- April Ferry
- Costume Supervisor
- Augusto Grassi
- Make-up
- Chief Artist:
- Luigi Rocchetti
- Artist:
- Maurizio Silvi
- 2nd Unit, Artists:
- Vincenzo Mastrantonio
- Eloisa De Laurentiis
- Renato Fancola
- Chief Hair Stylist
- Giancarlo De Leonardis
- Hair Stylists
- Elisabetta De Leonardis
- 2nd Unit:
- Mauro Tamagnini
- Paola Genovese
- Opticals/Titles
- Pacific Title
- Orchestrations
- Richard Marvin
- Ken Thorne
- Brad Dechter
- Peter Anthony
- Bruce Babcock
- Supervising Music Editor
- Daryl K. Kell
- Music Recordist/Mixer
- Dennis Sands
- Soundtrack
- "Dein ist mein ganzes Herz" - Benny Goodman; "Lover Come Back to Me"; "My Heart Stood Still"
- Choreography
- Leontine Snell
- Production Sound Mixer
- Ivan Sharrock
- Sound Mixers
- Steve Maslow
- Gregg Landaker
- Rick Kline
- 2nd Unit:
- Roberto Petrozzi
- Dubbing Recordists
- Brion A. Paccassi
- Frank J. Fleming
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Jon Johnson
- Sound Editors
- Bruce Stubblefield
- Miguel Rivera
- Dialogue Editor
- Robert Troy
- Sound Effects Design/
Editors - Keith Bilderbeck
- Angelo Palazzo
- Tim Gedemer
- Charles B. Maynes
- Sandy Gendler
- Sound Effects Recording
- Miguel Rivera
- Charles B. Maynes
- Keith Bilderbeck
- ADR
- Recordist:
- Scott Schmidt
- Mixer:
- David Horner
- Supervising Editor:
- Val Kuklowsky
- Editors:
- Petra Bach
- Michele Perrone
- Foley
- Artists:
- Edward M. Steidele
- Jerry Trent
- Mixers:
- Gary S. Coppola
- Sean Keegan
- Chris Trent
- Editors:
- Miguel Rivera
- Don Sylvester
- Background Editor:
- Brian Jennings
- Technical Adviser
- Vice Admiral Patrick Hannifin
- Cryptologic Consultant
- Dr David Kahn
- Aerial Co-ordinator
- 2nd Unit:
- Dirk Vahle
- Marine Co-ordinator
- Captain Julian
- Marine Supervisor
- Harry Julian Jr
- Tank Supervisor
- Danny Dade
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Pat Romano
- 2nd Unit:
- Seth Arnett
- Weapons Man
- Massimo Cristofanelli
- 2nd Unit Helicopter Pilots
- Ezio Canesso
- Monica Amadori
- Cast
- Matthew McConaughey
- Lt Andrew Tyler
- Bill Paxton
- Lt Commander Mike Dahlgren
- Harvey Keitel
- Chief Klough
- Jon Bon Jovi
- Lt Pete Emmett
- Jake Weber
- Lt Hirsch
- Dave Power
- Tank
- Derk Cheetwood
- Griggs
- Matthew Settle
- Larson
- Erik Palladino
- Mazzola
- David Keith
- Marine Major Coonan
- Thomas Kretschmann
- Wassner
- Thomas Guiry
- Trigger
- T.C. Carson
- Eddie
- Jack Noseworthy
- Wentz
- Will Estes
- Rabbit
- Rebecca Tilney
- Mrs Dahlgren
- Carolyna De Laurentiis
- Prudence Dahlgren
- Dina De Laurentiis
- Louise Dahlgren
- Burnell Tucker
- Admiral Duke
- Rob Allyn
- ensign
- Carsten Voigt
- German chief
- Günther Wuerger
- Kohl
- Oliver Stokowski
- German E-chief
- Arnd Klawitter
- German hydrophone operator
- Kai Maurer
- German planesman
- Robert Lahoda
- German engineer
- Peter Stark
- German lookout
- Erich Redman
- German bosun
- Sgt William John Evans
- Marine sergeant
- Robin Askwith
- British seaman
- Jasper Wood
- petty officer
- Martin Glade
- gunner officer
- Oliver Osthus
- depth charge officer
- Cpl John William Falconer
- Cpl Cory Glen Mathews
- other sergeants
- Valentina Adreatini
- Mrs Larson
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
- 10,448 feet
- 116 minutes 6 seconds
- Dolby Digital/Digital DTS Sound/8-channel SDDS
- In Colour
- Super 35 [2.35:1]