Matthew McConaughey and Harvey Keitel are on a mission to capture the Enigma, the Nazi code machine, from a German submarine in U 571.

An American submarine crew races to find the damaged German sub carrying the code breaker before another German sub can come to its aid. The second German sub does show up and sends the American sub to the great fleet week in the sky. A hardy band of Americans is left to maneuver U 571--and Enigma--to Allied waters. 

U 571 looks beautiful when its angry. During the many combat scenes, the sub's maneuvers under water are cool and realistic in a way that similar scenes in 1940s and 1950s submarine movies didn't have the XF to be. The characters also do their best when they're supposed to be scared out of their wits. The tenser the scene gets the better--and less vocal--the actors become.

The tension in many of the combat scenes is undercut, however, by an inflated score. The score seems to want to be heroic and sweeping in all the wrong places and generally just gets in the way of the on screen action.

U 571 also suffers from weak dialogue and does better when the sailors just stick to "dive! dive! dive!" and "up periscope."  The characters themselves are like plastic army men--completely interchangeable and indistinguishable from each other. 

One humorous little problem with the plot is how close it comes to being a movie about how one plucky German sailor saves the Enigma machine. Early on in the movie, the (still German) crew of the U 571 runs across a raft of British sailors who try to surrender. The Germans shoot the sailors. (I'm not sure why this non sequitur scene is  there. To remind us that the Nazis are bad? They're Nazis; bad is a given.) The only possible connection is that later in the movie one German soldier is taken captive and the Americans don't shoot him. He continues to cause trouble for the Americans and they continue to chain him up in different parts of the ship. It's war, people. I'm pretty sure they're allowed to kill him. 

The most unfortunate aspect of this movie is that it isn't true. The real story of how the Allies broke the Germans' code has the sort of intrigue and tension-filled race-for-all-of-mankind stuff that drives World War Two and, especially, Cold War movies. Unfortunately for Hollywood, the real story is primarily populated by Britons and other European Allies (I guess they didn't think McConaughey could pull off a limey accent). I'm holding out for that movie.

-Amy Diaz

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