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Summary: Still best example of pressures of hunter and hunted.
Review: This is still best story of hunter and hunted. (Later, more technologically advanced films principally focus on the sub. e.g. Das Boot, Red October and Crimson Tide.) Good guys/Bad guys-Americans/Germans nearly irrelevant to taut story line. Wendall Mays did a much better job on this screenplay than on other Mitchum-Powell collaboration, The Hunters. People who watch too much t.v. will recognize this as the basis for the Star Trek where they first met the Romulans. My copy is in color.
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Summary: Classic - parallels a Star Trek episode
Review: Wonderful way to spend about two hours. Mitchum and Jurgens were never better. The story line was almost exactly duplicated in a Star Trek (the original series) episode "Balance of Terror."
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Summary: The best WWII submarine flick.
Review: Excellent acting, no bimbos, and real action sequences that place you in the sub or on the destroyer. A movie that hightlights the mental battle between the crews.
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Summary: One of the truly great war movies
Review: I can't recommend this movie strongly enough. A well written movie that will have you wondering who you really want to see prevail.
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Summary: Spectacular WWII cat-and-mouse sea saga
Review: Spectacular sea saga where you can't always tell the cat from the mouse. Mitchum puts in a stellar performance as a destroyer captain who chases a career-strong but weary U-Boat captain. One of the best WWII movies Hollywood ever produced -- tightly edited, well paced, with only a couple of obvious cliche' scenes. (Watch for the scene where the U-Boat captain confronts a panicky crewman wielding a large wrench.)
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Summary: The greatest destroyer movie ever made
Review: To win WWII, the U.S. had to have control of the seas and the German U-boats had taken cntrol. Robert Mitchum puts the struggle in flesh and blood by showing the arduous sea, the team structure of the crew, the design capabilities of the DD, and the "chess game" between 2 Captains -- each deadly move is analyzed and calculated. Destroyers won WWII as much as any Carrier. It was a real sea-battle, real sailors, real strategy and real manuever. A terrific story. Better tahn the Caine mutiny or Casablanca END
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Summary: The Defining Submarine Movie. Taut and plenty of action!
Review: This is the movie that sets the standard for submarine movies. Made in the late 1950s, "The Enemy Below" has aged very nicely, and is still just as enjoyable as it was when it first came out.This is a tough, taut film of warfare at sea. Robert Mitchum puts in a superb performance as the no-nonsense, competent American destroyer skipper. Kurt Jurgens is excellent as the thoughtful and professional German U-Boat commander. The story is simple. In the South Atlantic, the American destroyer detects the German U-Boat, and has a mission to destroy it. The U-Boat has a mission which requires it to slip away from its American pursuer. The two highly experienced captains must seek to read the mind and guess the intentions and actions of the other in a complicated chess game. All of this makes for an excellent story. The German commander (Jurgens) is shown to be a non-Nazi and a humane thoughtful man. He fights because he is a professional, despite his belief that he is fighting "...a bad war." Since this film was made at the height of the cold war, one suspects that there is an element of reconciliation in the story--the notion that although Americans and Germans were enemies in WW2, they were going to be able to reconcile once the war was over. The story has this thread throughout. I don't wish to give away the story, and more would be telling. Suffice to say that this is an absorbing flick that achieves its goal: it entertains. This is one of the classic submarine flicks. Enjoy.
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Summary: The Enemy Below
Review: Set during the Battle of Atlantic during the Second World War, "The Enemy Below" tells the story of the cat and mouse Destroyer escort/U-Boat hunt. For the Americans, a former Merchant Mariner who saw his wife killed when his freighter was torpedoed by the Germans. For the Germans, a veteran U-Boat commander who sees no honor in the German aims of the war. Both of these highly experienced men must now battle each other, knowing that only one will survive.
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Summary: the best way to understand DEs
Review: When I want to understand my father's part on a Destroyer Escort in the Pacific in WWII, I can look at faded photos in a crumbling album, or read accounts of sea battles, but it all seems so incredibly far away and unreal. I am so grateful that Hollywood took the time and care in 1957 to make this movie about the battle of a DE and a U-Boat, filmed in large measure at sea on an actual DE. I can see how the decks gleamed in the sunlight, hear the sounds of a General Alarm and of men racing to battle stations, see depth charges, 20 MM and 3" guns, "hedgehogs", sonar and radar sweeps, compasses, officers' quarters and enlisted men's cots stacked three high.
In the original book the DE was British, and the ending considerably sadder than in this movie made 12 years after WWII, but the movie is remarkably free of sentimentality none the less. I am so glad it was made. See it.
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Summary: The minor actors tell you a lot!
Review: Other reviewers have given an accurate impression of The Eneny Below. One curious fact, not menTioned by others, is the usage of the same actors to play minor characters in both the German sub and the American escort destroyer. If you pay attention, you'll see the same actors in bit parts on both ships. Helps to reinforce the point in this film that in war, when you get below the politics among the ordinary soldiers/seamen, there is no good side or bad side, just two different sides of the same human coin.
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