Rating: 
Summary: Good flick, but nothing to write home about
Review: An American submarine is launched on a hastily organized mission to recover the Enigma code machine from a damaged German sub. If successful, this mission will provide the Allies with a decided advantage against the Nazis. This film is historically misleading (the British captured Enigma), but exciting in an efficient, workmanlike way. I was entertained as the crew careened from peril to peril. There's nothing new here, but it's a fun ride.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh dear oh dear
Review: Here we go again, Hollywood stealing the history of another nation and passing it off as their own. It amazes me that Hollywood feels the need to steal the history of other nations when there are many untold stories of American WW2 success that could be told instead. This doesn't just insult the British (who actually captured the enigma machine before America even joined the war), but it's also an insult to the Americans to have Hollywood try to pass this off as American history, not to mention an insult to both the American and British military personnel who actually fought this terrible war. ...
Rating: 
Summary: Good Film, Some Inaccuracies, But Good
Review: As some reviewers have pointed out, this film has some inaccuracies. True, the enigma machine was capture by the british in 1941. It was also true that the depth charge scenes in the film weren't exactly accurate of a depth charge attack, but necessary to the film's gritty feel.I enjoyed the film overall, but because of the inaccuracies, couldn't give it 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible and Insulting
Review: U-571 movie is an complete and utter insult to the British who fought and died in WW2. The historical innacuracies are everywhere. A big one is that the Brits captured the Enigma decoder machine, not the Americans (we weren't even in the war yet!). Why does Hollywood sometimes feel the need to rewrite history? I find it funny how most Americans give this movie high ratings, but most people outside the US rate it low. Are we (US) that stupid? Maybe Americans just don't give a hoot about how history is portrayed in movies as long as we are the clean-cut heroes who win in the end and take credit for everything. People say that this is only fiction and harmless. But I say that it is based on specific historical facts- which got totally twisted and distorted. Hollywood can make great historically accurate war movies when they really want to. This movie is total embarrasment and I appologize to all of the Brits for this insulting, inaccurate, [weak] movie. If this movie and the new Pearle Harbor are the sign of things to come, I think we are in trouble. Buy Das Boot. One of the best and historically accurate war movies ever made.
Rating:
Summary: A Solid World War 2 Naval Movie
Review: It's not very often we see a World War Two Naval movie. Being a fan of this genre of movie it was with a degree of nervousness that I watched U571, hoping that the Director could pull it off. I am pleased to say I wasn't disappointed. It isn't a classic but it is an enjoyable and entertaining movie that is a little different to most of the war dramas we see these days. The story line is interesting if not pretty basic. Capture a deciphering machine for decoding messages that can alter the direction of the war. The sets used to depict the submarine are believable. There is plenty of action to keep the adrenaline pumping and the tension is steady throughout the movie. The acting is sound if not overly spectacular and there are no real twists in the movie. World War Two enthusiasts and those who enjoy a slice of action should enjoy the movie. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Great modern-WWII story - w/word to UK critics
Review: In "U-571", an untested USN officer named Tyler (Mcaunaghey) leads the green crew of an obsolete USN submarine on a daring, top-sectret mission of modern piracy against a crippled Nazi U-Boat. It's 1942, dark days for the allies everywhere, and especially in the battle of the north Atlantic. Freighters steal across the Atlantic in convoys, desperate to get their needed cargo to Europe to shore up the western front against Germany. German sailors in U-boats hunt the convoys down in organized wolfpacks. In a desperate battle for both sides, the Germans lost about 30,000 men, but came close to cutting the Atlantic off. In the beginning of the flick, allied intelligence picks up the U-571's distress call, the having barely survived a crushing depth charge attack. Quickly realizing they've got a chance to grab the sub and its sensitive equipment intact, Washington hits upon a plan of modern-day piracy. They commandeer a tired "S-Boat" - an American submarine already obsolete before WWII - to rendezvous with U-571 under the disguise of rescuing German sub. The S-boat's inadequacies are painful, but her small size makes her a convincing stand-in for U-571's sister ship. Washington cares less about U-571 than its "Enigma" - an early generation of calculator used by the Kriegsmarine to decode/encode messages to and from its warships. By capturing an Enigma, the allies hope to break the German codes and learn to navigate its ships around the Nazi subs which, stealth aside, are slow and very vulnerable. Fooling the Germans at first, the initial operation comes off flawlessly - and our boys capture both Nazi-sub and enigma in one of those otherwise bloodless operations we've seen in countless war movies. But that's only a set-up for when the plan goes bad: U-571's actual sister-sub appears, torpedoes and all, and U-571 becomes the kind of movie we haven't seen that much of. With their own sub sent to the bottom, Tyler and the rest of his crew must save U-571, learn the secret of driving the foreign sub and sail her across the Atlantic. Tyler is a whiz at subs, but he's unproven. Instead, he relies on Chief Klough (Harvey Keitel) to explain what "Sub School" could not. After narrowly defeating U-571's sister-sub, Tyler and his crew settle on the slightly less impossible of two plans - sail for England, getting as close as possible without being sighted...by anybody. (Should the Germans learn of U-571's capture, they will certainly modify both Enigmas and their codes, and Tyler's efforts will have been in vain.) Discovery is less likely in an eastward course, even though it means braving waters swimming with U-boats. By the end of the flick, Tyler will have barely survived a game of "cat and mouse" with a German destroyer, and a near Mutiny with his own crew. This flick took a lot of lumps for realism stretches, though most deserve qualification. The film entirely omits any mention of England's recovery of an Enigma machine in 1941, years before we Yanks. Simply ignoring history is bad, but it doesn't make the story as implausible as "U-571"'s many British critics would insist. Given how tight-lipped the British were on any subject connected to their ability to read German codes, it's entirely possible that too few American planners in '42 would have known enough about England's possession of Enigma to declare Tyler's mission unnecessary (England declined to declassify their work on Enigma after the war's end, keeping the wraps on until the early 1970's). A cursory mention of England's seizure of Enigma does not otherwise correct the historical flaws of the film (the story is still inexplicably bereft of any British characters, and it would have taken little to actually add some to the script). On the flip side, a painfully accurate story obviates a more stinging barb on the Brits - one that both acknowledges that they got Enigma first, but also that they kept their exploits silent even knowing that their allies would risk their own men on near suicidal missions to nab what the British already had. (Can you imagine the howls had "U-571" ended with our heroes turning over their hard-won prize to the RN...only for it to join hordes of similar machines silently amassed by the allies, blind, deaf and dumb to the sacrifices of Tyler's men?) The subject of England's stinginess with anything relating to German cryptography, at the cost of American lives, is discussed overtly in Robert Harris's great novel "Enigma", a novel which Has not been criticized for historical inaccuracy. Further, while critics here think this is another attempt at Hollywood revisionism, it's easy to point out that Hollywood holds no monopoly in that area, as anybody who's ever seen "Breaking the Sound Barrier" can attest - in which we learn that the first man to fly faster than sound was actually a British Pilot flying a DeHavilland fighter. While "Breaking" boldly claimed for England credit for the first manned supersonic flight, 'U-571' at least had the decency to set its story a year after the Brits Enigma recovery. Taking an unrealistic premise - Tyler and his crew assimilating the incredibly complicated and undeniably foreign ship - "U-571" works in a very realistic way, with the script showing how quick thinking and not a small amount of luck saved the day, and how narrowly Tyler and crew beat the odds. The cinematography goes even further, letting us know that, contrary to what we've seen in "Run Silent, Run Deep" and "Destination Tokyo", Submarines were cramped and dark, leaked water, were very slow, groaned under the pressure of the water above and, when surfaced, dipped and climbed on waves like a tin can. This is probably the only flick since "Das Boot" to convey just how impossible a job it was to fight in subs in WWII. It's no "Das Boot", but "U-571" now makes it impossible to watch any of those quaint and propaganda-laden movies made during the war.
Rating:
Summary: Money for old rope
Review: As a world war 2 buff I was looking forward to watching this movie, especially in the age when film makers are doing much better in obtaining accurate research to provide the best means of providing the audience with authenticity. A modern W.W.II submarine movie should be good!
I was grossly disappointed. This film was slapped together by people who know nothing of submarine warfare and apparently did zero research into the subject. Some of the stunts pulled off by the sub crew and way they survived, over and over again when they should have been blown to bits, was laughable. Okay, so the film makers are entitled to a little flexibility to make for good entertainment, but they went way too far. The visual 'wow factor' rapidly diminished to 'give me a break.'
The film also gave the impression that this was in some way an accurate depiction of the US navy being the first to capture the notorious Enigma coding machine, they weren't, the British already had one and had broken the codes by 1942. In summary, very much a 'B' movie, not recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Hollywood's Revisionist Bent
Review: U-571 is good movie with plenty of action and excitement. However, as a quasi-historical story it comes up seriously short in the accuracy department. The movie takes a real event and re-casts it with an American flavor. The simple fact is that U-571 depicts Americans capturing a German Enigma coding machine to break Nazi communications. The feat was actually accomplished by the British in 1941 -- before the United States entered World War II. Hollywood's revisionist bent is nothing new. Other recent movies such as Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot have sent historians running for the asprin bottle. What concerns me most is the showing parts or all of this movie in school classrooms as a substitute for real history.
Rating: 
Summary: Abandon ship!
Review: Marine Maj. Coonan: "How far down does this ship go?" Lt. Commander Mike Dahlgren: "Oh, she'll go all the way to the bottom if we don't stop her." Well, unfortunately, this entire film goes straight to the bottom. U-571 chronicles a salvage mission where the crew of a U.S. sub attempts to board a disabled German U-boat in the mid-Atlantic. The objective of the mission is to recover the secret Enigma machine which the Nazis use to cipher their messages. In charge of this mission is Lt. Cmdr. Mike Dahlgren (Bill Paxton) and his executive officer Lt. Andrew Tyler (Matthew McConaughey). As with most things in life, matters do not unfold as planned and soon Tyler and a skeleton crew find themselves in the disabled U-boat trying to evade the pursuing Germans. Now as a submarine movie, U-571 must contain all the necessary cliche sequences familiar to this sub-genre: the dropping of depth charges by the enemy, the dramatic moments where members of the crew grovel in terror as underwater explosions just miss their sub, the hushed whispering between the crew, and the periodic mechanical breakdowns that immediately causes everyone to start yelling. Yet even with these assorted cliches in place, U-571 does not rise to the level of an entertaining film because the entire film is just the cliches and nothing else. There are no involving character arcs or surprising twists in the story. While watching this film, you are constantly reminded that Das Boot and The Hunt for Red October were far superior films. Matthew McConaughey gives a great performance but this film is stuck in drydock from the start.
Rating: 
Summary: A fine story of leadership at sea! A great submarine flick.
Review: This is a wonderful movie which highlights the leadership growth of a young naval officer suddenly thrust into command under incredibly challenging circumstances. Originally evaluated by his captain as "not ready" for command, Lt. Tyler is faced with a striking array of challenges. This is a story, primarily, of leadership at sea. We often forget that our fighting men are often asked to do the nearly impossible, as portrayed in this movie. I have seen just about every submarine movie around, and in my opinion this one compares favorably with "The Enemy Below," "Das Boot," "Run Silent Run Deep" and other greats. It is far more watchable than "Das Boot"--U-571 does not have any of the dull, draggy interludes that punctuate "Das Boot" (and most other European movies). The storyline is brisk, the acting is crisp and authentic, and the story grabs you from the very first moments. This is a great movie. This movie has wonderful sound effects. The visuals are utterly real--the viewer feels transported into an old WW2 vintage submarine, and from this realizes an appreciation for the heroism of the men who fought a war inside these steel tin cans. Some of our European friends are bitter because this story is about the US Navy mounting a mission to capture a German enigma machine. While it is true that the Brits did more of this than did America (after all, they were in the war longer, and the US Navy had to fight two wars at once) it is also true that the US Navy did capture an enigma machine during the war, through heroism and competence. There is nothing amiss here by virtue of the movie being about Americans. Put aside your prejudices and enjoy this movie! It is a story of leadership and bravery, not just a "shoot-em-up." Watching Lt. Tyler mature into a superb submarine skipper and gain the respect of his crew is really what this story is about--and a great story it is.
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