That was an excellent one.

Sadly Over-hyped

Better Late Then Never

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It has an interesting story executed poorly. I couldn't figure out if this was supposed to be a serious drama or light camp. Acting was average with standouts William H Macy carrying the film as well as the German executive officer. Still it actually moved well for me and I was entertained by it. I have a keen interest in U-boats having traveled the world to see them as well as the US fleet subs. The feats performed in this movie by the submarines underwater is essentially science fiction in pre-1945 submarine warfare. Loads of other technical errors as well in the production, but in a quick and dirty film who cares. It was made on a budget and that's that. So if you want to really see reality, Das Boot still stands alone. I give it 5 starts, for sloppy production, but still recommend it over most of the garbage on Netflix.

How can i start with this? OK... so i am a very big fan of war movies and especially WW2 movies. Now this is not a story about WW2....may be themed this way, but many are off topic, except of course the intro which is documentary based facts. Now movies like these and especially WW2 war movies must be so perfectly made to be running only around 90mins + So this was a very bad attempt, firstly the timing of things were wrong in the sense that the scenes were too short or long in some cases were they shouldn't be. The choice of actors was just the worse of all. German soldiers in a U boat are many more but even so, they would be ranked differently, and also behave much differently...if there was one thing that was their trait was discipline and organisation.. and here we come to the main actor, i think apart from the movie ''Fargo'' W.H Macy is the kind of actor to be used as voice in a cartoon. His lines are too flat his voice to monotonous. He speaks like an ordinary person to an ordinary family event. No passion, no expression no change of tone, nothing..just nothing... in scenes of danger happiness sadness etc his face remains unchanged, except when he speaks and you cannot distinguish weather or not his smiling with it. WW2 deserve much more powerful characters as main roles, and a careful casting of crew and technical study before being placed in such a theme. The story line is too simple with a couple of expected twists in it but for sure is the kind of movie you would listen for 3 minutes and watch it for 1.

Mild spoilers. I did not serve in WW2, nor the navy, heck, I didn't serve in the military. But I do know of it and its history. And when someone goes to see a movie like this they'd expect some semblance of accuracy. SOME semblance! Could they not find more footage of older ships or even CGI? Would a captain command switch to battery from diesel, even though they hadn't been on surface (no snorkel)? Would they house prisoners in their torpedo room, unshackled and unguarded? Would a destroyer shell a fully submerged Uboat (and destroy with one salvo)? Paraphrasing: "Get to battlestations!" OK, you had already made contact and fired torpedoes, so NOW you let certain unaware crew members know you're fighting?!? What about... I could go on. I don't expect historical films to be 100% accurate but at least try to make it believable! The people watching this movie know it's about war, a real war, one that has occurred fairly recently and is well documented. I suppose the repeated gaffs on appearance and tactics of combat could be overlooked if you just want action, which wasn't poor but certainly not exceptional. But that's all you get. Acting=horrific (from some decent, respected actors) although I'm guessing it is actually a directing issue. The script? Worse. Holly's and Macy's chemistry,... sigh. I have a feeling the reason I thought the German navy personnel dialogue was the best is because it was subtitled so I didn't get as much of the awful timing and flat out unrealistic conversation (regardless of era) tone between the English speaking characters.I'm not a 'hater' that just wants to bash movies, but know: This is my first review because I could not stand to see the glowing reviews of this pile. My first. I'm middle aged and have used IMDb for quite a while and decided I could not let others be fooled. My first review. I stopped the movie a third of the way through, decided to see how bad it could get, restarted (it got worse) and finished. Don't let my pain be yours.tl/dr: No.

Aside from the sheer improbability of it all, the film works if you're interested in an offbeat psychological treatment of enemy combatants suddenly caught up in a life or death situation threatening both sides. There's no real life scenario I can envision in which a German submarine crew saves Americans from their own destroyed vessel, so you have to make that mental leap to follow the story. The meningitis plot challenges the captain of the German sub (Til Schweiger) and American Chief of Boat Nathan Travers (William H. Macy) to find a way out of their predicament in an honorable way. To his credit, the German commander must dissuade his own crew from attacking the survivors, while Travers has the near impossible task of bringing his crew home following the death of their own Commander (Scott Caan). The attack by the German warship was an interesting element, although one does get distracted by the fake looking torpedoes and depth charges used in the production. For a real intense submarine war story, you really need to see the 1981 German film "Das Boot", and even though 1957's "The Enemy Below", is not as compelling, it's certainly more realistic than this one.