U-571 (2001)
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, Jon Bon Jovi, David Keith, Jake Weber, Jack Noseworthy, Tom Guiry, Will Estes, Erik Palladino, Dave Power, Thomas Kretschmann, and Terrence “T.C.” Carson
DIRECTOR: Jonathan Mostow
WRITERS: Jonathan Mostow, Sam Montgomery, and David Ayer; from a story by Mostow
PRODUCERS: Dino De Laurentiis and Martha De Laurentiis
GENRES: Drama, War, Historical, Thriller
RATING: MPAA – PG-13 for war violence
DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures
It’s 1942, and Nazi Germany is decisively winning the Atlantic war. Their Enigma encoding device makes their ciphering system unbreakable, so the Allies cannot decipher Nazi messages they intercept. When the German submarine U-571 becomes adrift in the North Atlantic, Naval Command sends an American sub masquerading as a German sub to intercept U-571, in hopes of capturing the German’s sub Enigma machine. When disaster strikes the American mission, Lt. Andrew Tyler (Matthew McConaughey) and the survivors commandeer U-571 and race for safety with a German warship right behind them.
U-571 is woefully inaccurate history. For one thing, the British Royal Navy was the first to capture the Enigma machine, and did so before the United States entered World War II. History aside, U-571 is a rousing old-fashioned submarine movie that keeps up the edge-of-the-seat suspense from start to finish. The performances are good, but the movie’s success as a thriller-at-sea is mainly because of director Jonathan Mostow and his creative crew: cinematographer, editor, sound and sound editing, etc. If only this effort had gone into making a historical accurate movie, but cinema doesn’t owe history the courtesy of being accurate. On its own terms, U-571 is a rousing sea-going adventure and an excellent “movie for guys who love movies.”
A-
2001 Academy Awards: 1 win for “Best Sound Editing” (Jon Johnson); and 1 nomination for “Best Sound” (Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker, Rick Kline, and Ivan Sharrock)
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