Rating: 
Summary: A masterpiece torpedoed by Hollywood
Review: The original version of this movie is a German public television production
and is 6 hours long. It shows the good and ugly in very young people who
were sent to war. The absurdity of war as well as fear, desperation and
suffering of the victims are in the spotlight. This is one of the best
Anti-War movies. Highly recommended, if you can find the original version.The "Director's Cut" is a carnage made by Hollywood's simple-minded
monopolists. Every contrast shown in the original movie is gone. Only the
faceless ugly side is left. Hollywood's wrongdoers take pride in replacing
the sound of an exploding bomb. Hollywood never did and never will
understand war. And because they don't want you to understand it either you
will never find a translated version of the uncut original production. This
is censorship of the most disgusting form. At long last Amazon managed to spell the names of the actors right. Cheers!
Rating: 
Summary: You MUST see this masterpiece!
Review: Forget the popular portrayals of the German soldier in World War II, forget the Hollywood hype and such diatribes as U-571, this is THE submarine movie! Shown from the point of view of a German U-Boat, U-96, Petersen masterfully depicts a typical patrol for a German U-Boat in the years when the Battle of the Atlantic was starting to slip away from the Kriegsmarine's grasp. You cannot help but identify with each of the character's. The Captain, known with affection as the "Old Man" forever keeps a cool head under the most intense pressures. His death in the final scene is a true tragedy. The journalist, tasked with producing a report for U-Boat Headquarters is unfamiliar with the environment, and subject to many a joke by his collegues on board! As each minutes passes, you'll become more engrossed in the toils that face the crew. You'll silently wish for them to gain a success after days upon days of waiting for orders, you'll laugh as they poke fun at the Reich's political leaders..."Where are you Herr Goering!" But what is more, you'll be actively willing them on as they embark on a near suicide mission through the Gibraltar straits, with the Captain all the while on the bridge being drenched with seawater! You'll also curse the Allied bombers as they strafe the dockyards after the crew successfully enter port at La Rochelle - having spent almost an entire day lodged at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, with the crew living off nothing but spare oxygen tanks and stale bread. Wolfgang Petersen is a master at his profession, and I urge anyone with an interest in military history, or action in general, to watch this superb piece. Pity only five stars are available!
Rating: 
Summary: Einstiegen!
Review: I saw this film in the theater when I was a wee lad, and I hold it largely responsible for my lifelong fascination with Adolf Hitler's Germany and the men who chose to fight for it. Like most thirtysomethings, I grew up watching cornball American war movies and TV shows that usually depicted the Germans (and the Japanese) as comic-opera buffoons ("Hogans Heroes"), sub-human hordes fit only for a burst from a Tommy gun ("Bataan"), or cartoon bad guys with eyepatches, monocoles, dueling scars and varnished black boots, who smoked cigarettes with that peculiar European three-fingered grip and said things like, "You're being very foolish....we have ways of making you talk" but when push came to shove just couldn't seem to shoot straight ("Where Eagles Dare"....and how hard could it possibly be to hit Richard Burton's fat, drunken ass anyway?) "Das Boot" was the first film I had ever seen that depicted the Germans as human beings fighting for their country (if not necessarily their Party, or Hitler), and it depicted them in all their vulgar, profane, humorous, sweaty, smelly, unshaven, drunken glory. Strangely enough, the movie (like the book by Lothar-Gunther Bucheim, which remains one of my favorites) decides not to give many of the principal characters full names, but merely ranks or first names(The Captain, The First Watch Officer, the Chief of the Boat, etc). I think this was done mainly to keep the 'everyman' feel of things, i.e., to make sure the audience understood that these characters represented the U-boat arm as a whole rather than any particular 'famous' boat such as Prien's, Schepke's, Kretschmer's, Endrass's, etc.) Many people were distinctly uncomfortable seeing the German soldier (or sailor), always depicted as a jackbooted, sadistic robot, shown as more or less indistinguishable from his American counterpart, and I am convinced that this is 50% of the movie's appeal. The other is of course that this is a submarine film, and they are ALWAYS cool. The U-boat war against the Allies had a number of phases in which each side gained and then lost the advantage. This film is set during the fall of 1941, just before America entered the war, when the tide of the battle was turning against the Germans for the first time after a year of heavy successes against British convoys. The captain of this boat, brilliantly played by Jurgen Prochnow, is an 'old man' at 30 years of age (not merely because his crew is made up of 18 year olds, but because he is one of the few captains to have survived this long) with a half-buried hate for the Nazis and a grudging admiration for the British navy. His officers made up of a willing but rather naive war correspondent, a stiff-necked Hitler admirer, a clownish second officer, a combat-fatigued chief one step from a nervous breakdown, and a brilliant engineer whose wife has an apparently life-threatening disease. Nevertheless, these fellows know their business, and the actors, who (we are told from the DVD commentary) were not only drilled to look and act like real sailors, but recruited from all over Germany and Austria to give the film a feeling of how Hitler's Reich absorbed German-speakers from all over and homogonized them into a fighting machine of ruthless efficiency. The best thing about the film, which is a director's cut edited down from the enormous, 18 hour "Das Boot" mini-series originally aired in Germany, is its production. The film takes place almost entirely on the U-boat, and the boredom, claustrophobia, tension, heat, stench and bad lighting seem to close around the viewer as if he were actually on board. In particular the depth-charging scenes are agonizing to watch, as lightbulbs burst, control panels short out, water spurts in from broken fittings and hull bolts, driven by the immense pressure of the ocean's depths, explode out like machine-gun bullets into the crew. The awful nature of the U-boat was that once it struck its target, it was essentially helpless and its destruction or survival depended almost entirely on the ability of one man, the "Kaeleun" (captain) to out-wit the enemy above. Some reviewers have taken issue with the realism of the anti-Nazi sentiments of the boat's characters, saying that this follows the post-WWII liberal-revisionist German line that there were basically two kinds of Germans during the war: those who were simply fighting for their country and had no use for Hitler, and the Nazi villains who adamantly supported him and his crimes. Many English/American novelists hold this view, a la Jack Higgins, so as to be able to create both "sympathetic" and "evil" German characters. I half-agree with this. The German navy was an extremely apolitical and professional bunch, officers actually being forbidden to join the Nazi Party, and probably many officers echoed the captain's ill feelings in real life. On the other hand, having read works like Stephen Fritz's "Frontsoldaten" and the memiors of Gen. Hans-Ulrich Rudel, I have come to believe that belief in Hitler and National Socialism ran very, VERY deep in the average German for much of the war, and this "good vs evil" mind-set is largely a device of both the Germans and their apologists to avoid this fact. "The Boat's" DVD extras are interesting, especially the featurette on how the U-boat "set" was a real U-boat (!) constructed from old blueprints by the same manufacturer who made them in the war (!!). I strongly suggest that English-speaking audiences watch the subtitled version first rather than the English-dubbed version, although unlike most dubbed versions this one is dubbed by the actual actors, since most of the principals, including Prochnow, speak fluent English. Hearing the German, if you only understand the obvious words, is very important to the experience.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Sub Movie of All Time
Review: This movie has many imitators, but no equals. U-571, Crimson Tide, The Hunt for Red October, and many others have tried to imitate the sheer power and unbelievable heroism that this movie shows.
U-571, for example, tried to take German heroism and their exploits and tried to make them into American ones. This really angered me, since there was no way that the Americans could have done that. However, it is completely shocking to me that the entire story of Das Boot is totally true.
These are more unsung heroes of WWII that few have really noticed. They deserve much more attention than they receive for their amazing heroism and ingenuity.
Anyway, this movie will change your view of war. Many feel that war is a glorius and exciting thing to take part in, but they are oh so terribly wrong. If you watch this movie, you will know what war is really about. Wolfgang Petersen will not deceive you.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent movie,
Review: An excellent movie,superbly made. Even better than the U-571 (where in U-571 lacked in emotions,just kind of fast paced actions most of the time except at the end where the crew has to set up a decoy). Das Boot vividly painted the tensioons, emotions of the crew, so eventhough they are Hitler's soldiers, we are forced to symphatized with them. It also vividly painted the life of a submariner. Hmmm, did you guys notice that lemon is the all time favourite fruits in the movie? The only suggestion that I can give is : listen it in its original language (if you understand German), the english dialogues kind of neutralize the tensions/ emotions that the crews feels at the time. If you could, check out the SUPERBIT version of this magnificent film. All the details is fanfastic. In the regular version, you could actually see shadow/grains in the corners of the screen.
Rating:
Summary: Favorite movie ever! Watch this - DVD or Video, whatever!
Review: I remember "Das Boot" when it first aired on German TV as a series and recorded it on Beta (hey, my Mom was told that Beta was the wave of the future!) I watched this movie over and over, even got the Buchheim book for Christmas, and in the preceding years wrote a graduate history paper based on the German U-Boot experience. All this from Petersen's masterpiece! The "long version" of the movie - the Director's Cut - is my favorite because it closely follows the series. I've seen the shorter movie version and felt that editing ruined some important nuances. I also liked the dubbing on the Director's Cut, because some of the English translations were done by the German actors themselves (at least it sounded as if Prochnow, Gruenemeyer and Semmelrogge were doing the English translations.) My favorite part is when the crew sings, "It's a long way to Tipperary!" All in all - I HIGHLY recommend this movie, in whatever version you decide to watch. The portrayal of the German U-Boot experience is factual and the acting is above superb.
Rating:
Summary: Sunken Treasure Resurfaced
Review: I rated this 4 stars because of the length not the content. I am a great fan of war stories and this one is it compared to talking to a live person. You can't help but feel everything these brave men are feeling as they try to do their duty to their nation in this terrible war and the conflict that comes up when common sense and orders colide. The hard decisions and suspense of the Captain and anguish of the men as the U-boat is being depth charged. I found it best viewed in German with English subtitles as you will notice after while you won't need them. Although it is a long movie it is still an excellent and very worthy viewing time for war movie fans and other interested people as well. The other version that is shorter is also excellent and very worthwile.
Rating:
Summary: Craftsmanship and Talent
Review: Those are what make "Das Boot" so memorable, especially in this directors' cut, which goes further in the physcological and physical strain that was put on the crew of U-96. Set in 1941 as WWII was heating up, a veteran U-boat captain takes a new, unexperienced crew out into the treacherous Atlantic to hunt down British warships. For the first 21 days, they encounter nothing, but writer/director Wolfgang Peterson (whose American films include "Air Force One," "In the Line of Fire," and the Trojan war epic "Troy" due out the summer of 2004) uses this time to build strong characters, most of whom are pure seamen at heart, and care little for the ambitions of the Hitler and the Third Reich, fighting only for their country. That fact is a major part of why "Das Boot" is so extraordinary (other than the white-knuckled tension that kicks-in when they meet British Warships, another accomplishment to director Peterson). It shows WWII history from the point of the Germans, who were not all die-hard believers in Hitler and his creed. But once Her Majestys' Navy shows up, "Das Boot" becomes the precedent for unbearable suspense. Shooting all the scenes aboard the U-Boat in a cramped, true-to-life replica of the submarines, Director Peterson with hand-held camera crafts the mounting tension with expert timing that produces large jolts of adrenaline. Towards the end, you find yourself rooting for the U-Boat crew against the Royal Navy amid the crew's tangible fatigue and seemingly impossible obstacles, including a near-suicidal mission when then try to force their way through the Gibraltor Strait, which is an Allied stronghold. But because of the craftsmanship and talent of Petersen, his actors and technical team, you cannot help help but sympathize and root for the crew. "Das Boot" more than earns its continuing reputation as one of the greatest war movies ever made.
Rating:
Summary: Das Boot - An emotional roller coaster!
Review: Of all of the World War II films and war films in general that I've watched, none can compare to "Das Boot" and the emotional roller coaster that this film portrays! From the very beginning to the end of this film, I found myself to be thoroughly engrossed, captivated and empathizing with the crew of this German U-Boat and its true tale told with frightening reality by director Wolfgang Petersen. Do not let the running time of approximately 209 minutes discourage you in any way when contemplating watching this film because, as stated above, this is a truly taut and suspenseful film that will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. The premise: Das Boot is the true story (with a mixture of minor "movie making" embellishment) of a German U-Boat and her crew during the latter stages of World War II. It is that timing that brings such poignancy to the film and the U-Boat crews' tale, for if it were set earlier in the war it would've been an entirely different story. Long gone for the U-Boat crews are the days when the British and Americans were stumbling around "trying" to figure how to counter the U-Boats; these are the days in which they're sending most U-Boats to the bottom long before they've had a chance to get near the merchantmen and their precious cargo of men and supplies! With that premise in mind the movie sets off with a party where the crew and officers are enjoying themselves for the majority of them do not believe they will be returning and are also expressing "misgivings" over Hitler and his poor strategic and tactical planning. We're then taken to the U-Boat and her launching on her mission to find Allied merchantmen and put them on the bottom. What follows from there is a film that will actually have you cheering and praying for the crew of this U-Boat as she and her crew goes through the emotional ups and downs of war, to include the terror of being depth charged. I highly recommend this film to any and all fans of films of this genre as it truly a classical masterpiece that deserved a "Director's Cut" and plays extraordinarily well with the added sixty minutes. {ssintrepid} Special Features: - The film itself is a special feature as it has been digitally remastered with additional footage to include the soundtrack.
- Director's Commentary
- The Making of/Behind The Scenes
Rating:
Summary: A film beyond words
Review: But I'll try. First, if you have a surround theatre system in your home, get this Superbit version. It has a DTS soundtrack that will rip your guts out. If you have a mere television, get the other version because it has a "making of" feature that the Superbit version does not. Having said that, what more can be said of this incredible film. The tension is just nerve-ripping. The music punches the tension into overdrive. The sound effects and tension the actors put into their dialogue can't be matched in any film. The filming is so claustrophobic and tight you feel like you are in the submarine with the guys as they go through hell. High moments to low back to high back to low. There is simply no other film that grabs and holds like this one. It's 210 minutes long in the director cut and when it's over you feel like you were there and the sweat will be dripping off you. This is not a sit-back-and-watch experience-this is a full participation flick and you will be on the edge of your seat. This movie (and maybe Lawrence of Arabia in Superbit, too) is the movie for which you finally buy the biggest widescreen projection TV and all the surround sound you can afford.
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