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How's my Deutsch?Watched last night OUR answer to that widely accepted decadent Das Boot. I believe it is called U-571 or some such.
How do you create "our" answer, when you have no brains and don't know how? Well, first, as usual, you take some serious event - and I have little reason to think something like that did not happen in reality (maybe will find the Enigma book to read again), but I am somewhat sure in reality they didn't have this sorry bunch of cardboard cutouts for characters.
So let's skip the load of motherthood and apple pie about the war and sacrifice - let's just stop prostituting the important things in our lives!
Anyway, here we have that "another" Das Boot and this one sinks not a second too soon. It is loaded with your typical Hollywood standard sub-scripts like you would not believe - so little wonder it DOES sink eventually. A vicious German prisoner who frees himseld and kills his benevolent, friendly American guard... the obligatory guy who dies saving the whole bunch - as he finally, on his last breath, *reaches* for that valve, just in time to launch the last torpedo...
And that TORPEDO!!!!!!! You have never seen a torpedo like that before, I can assure you. Judging by the pictures, it had the charge of about few kilotons. It hit the destroyer straight on, and the whole thing explodes to high heavens like one cheap firework. Too bad we apparently ran out of these super-torpedos, or the war would have been far shorter...
And you shoud see those German 150mm guns go puk-puk, with little gas flames coming out of them, shooting at that American rusty can from about 100 meters, mostly missing, sometimes hitting it, but causing, of course!!! no damage.
Out guys didn't have that problem. They sail towards the destroyer, they stand on the bridge, their German hats on (too fool the dumb fascists), they wave to the naive German sailors, and they yell "Gestapo, Gestapo, heil, heil, SaurKraut Uberalles", and of course, invisibly to Germans, all that at 100 meters, they load their 120mm gun, aim it at the radio tower, and with one perfect shot disable all communication equpment on board.
And how can I not mention that Horrible, Horrible, Horrible Hollywood-style movie music!!!! How can any human whrite "patriotic" noise like that? It feels like yet another collage of the unfortunately too familiar grandiose but empty pieces, losely glued together, stuff one always finds in the modern trash - it could have been perfectly at place in the Ryan, just pieces rearranged, perhaps.
So all in all - bad plot, idiotic and completely inept directing, lousy acting - too bad someone didn't just sink it before it taking to sea...
Drawing some rather obvious parallels to Das Boot makes this exsercise just more laughable...
OK, OK, I shall give credit where it is due - it looks GREAT on a digital TV - that with just plain cable signal. Some nice water and underwater shots (the German torpedos glancing off the sub's sides), fit enough to be used as your poor-man's HDTV demo.
Follow Ups:
In the very beginning, when the crew returns to base, there's a close shot of a dockyard arc welder doing his job WITHOUT any eye protection. One second at such distance to arc kills retina. Forever. In Gulag or New Haven dockyard, it's the same.Scenes like this outweigh the borrowed German depth gauge. All the Hollywood's plot schematics are nothing compared to it.
I kept feeling like they were in a set on U-571. Das Boot was superior in every way, one of which included conveying the claustrophobic (sp?) feeling of a u boat.
Clearly, your expectations were too high, Victor. Pointing out the impossibilities in this flick is just too easy.The film credits a couple of similar incidents in which the British Navy was involved; and there was a minor furor over the fact that the Yanks "made themselves the heroes" instead of the Brits.
However, I read from an authoritative source, that actually the USN did capture a German sub off the coast of Africa and took it under tow back to the US. The American skipper who performed this feat was nearly court-martialed; because USN was under strict orders to sink all German subs. The reason for this (and the only sense in which "U-571" was accurate) is that the US did not want the Germans to believe that the Allies had ever captured an Enigma code machine. Had the Germans known that their code was compromised, they would have stopped using it, and the Brits' heroic code-breaking efforts would have been for naught.
That captured U-Boat, by the way, is on display in a midwestern US city. I think it's in Chicago. One of the very few preserved in the world.
The idea of a non-German crew attempting to operate a U-Boat verges on the suicidal, even if they could read German.
RBB --
"Q-tips (tm) work great!"
=)
...how bad it was. Whatsa matter? Didnt believe me? ;)I still love those machine gun rate depth charge barrages...and the on top of the deck radio shack (nah, not like that would be a valued resource that would be below deck, buried within the armoured superstructure for protection), and the instantaneous crew repairs by a skeleton crew that couldnt read German, and the miracle shot out of the stern tube with the last remaining torpedo following the barely survived crash dive in a mortally wounded sub, and the..., oh never mind...
joe
Guilty. I don't always remember the non-recommended films, so this was a perfect example of stepping into a real... you know.Yeah, you stepped into it first... and you know what? That is not gonna stop others from doing the same.
...I mean earlier this year. I managed to put it out of my mind so successfully it seemed to have happened ages ago. Thanks for reminding me Victor :(Joe
I have to agree. What a schlock. Someone also said something about the Perfect Storm, another poor show that did not make any sense. We have to be running on the longest drought of movies in a long time. I just saw Red Planet, I know it was panned, but I looked at my watch ten times. My 8 year old came out saying he didn't think the atmosphere cound be earthlike in one small area on a planet. Good boy.Don't forget Space Cowboys. woof woof.
I hate it when Hwood thinks they can exchange pacing and action for story. And simply ignore 8th grade physics. That movie that came out a month ago and was on DVD in a week (can't remember name). The remake of Advise and Consent. I loved Advise and Consent. I thought it was a prime candidate for remake. And they blow it.
MI2 yucch
Star Wars I : ouch
The Grinch: panned.Too much sun and working lunches going on in tinseltown.
P
Thanks for the thumbs down, Vitiok. I was already wondering if it would be anything like the real thing, to me still the best war movie ever and although Wolfgang Petersen after this masterpiece sold his soul to the devil to make 'Airforce One', making me laugh insanely about the seriousness of Harrison Ford ( Is that man an actor or your average neighbour?) saluting the squadron of fighters after he managed to take control of this plane of planes, but I'm pretty sure this movie you reviewed so eloquently will not enter the house.Robtsjik
***Thanks for the thumbs down, Vitiok. I was already wondering if it would be anything like the real thing, to me still the best war movie ever and although Wolfgang Petersen after this masterpiece sold his soul to the devil to make 'Airforce One',Yes, we had discussed that one some time ago here. Some people had suggested that "The Perfect Storm" was the sign of his recovery and return to good film making, but I have not seen that one yet.
***making me laugh insanely about the seriousness of Harrison Ford ( Is that man an actorNo.
***or your average neighbour?)
No to that one either. He is a rich shmuck.
***saluting the squadron of fighters after he managed to take control of this plane of planes, but I'm pretty sure this movie you reviewed so eloquently will not enter the house.
Yep, that one I think is a waste of time, but if you like good war movies, do a search here - this has been discussed several times before and simply excellent lists are available here.
Just disregard the one very common recommendation - the Stalag 17. I still can't figure out which particular nasty perverted twist in the American perception put this "masterpiece" on the map. My feelings regarding that one are well known, and they ain't good.
As far as the "Schlechtes", I suspected it was a mistake. My rusty German told me "Schlechte" but I looked at the Alta-vista and used its translator to "verify" myself. I gave it "bad" and it responded "schlechtes", so I simply pasted it.
Should trust my instincts more...
The difference between Das Boot and the U-571 is very telling of the distinction between the typical examples of the American vs. European film making. While the continental school spends most of its time analyzing the reality and people within that reality, the Hollywood seeks to create the artificial, grotesque sub-reality for the simple reason that it believes that "normal" folks and their "normal" problems are of no interest to the movie goers.
And guess what? Over the decades they had CREATED that new movie goer, the new MAN. Where Marxism had failed, Hollywood succeeded.
Too bad really, because they used to know how to make good ones. And infrequently they still do. I watched the last night "My Cousin Vinny" (must have been for the tenth time) and it IS a good movie, a truckload of fun and just great innoffensive entertainment, a simple movie that it is.
Highly recommended.
das schlechte Boot
des schlechten Bootes
dem schlechten Boot
das schlechten Bootein schlechtes Boot
eines schlechten Bootes
einem schlechten Boot
ein schlechtes Bootdunkelhaft,
Rob
I'm glad you mentioned that incredible torpedo. It didn't just sink that destroyer, it blew it to high heaven. I understand that modern torpedos sink ships not by direct impact, but by detonating underneath the hull, resulting in a water pressure differential that ruptures the ship's shell.Victor, you've really got to see the hilarious "Top Secret", the best spoof of WWII movies.
The U-571 was quite unforutnate. After two months of nothing but politics on TV, I finally managed to sweet talk my wife into watching a movie, "just today, honey, - it is Saturday and they don't do nothing on Saturdays!" So I wasted my shot and God knows when I shall see another movie now - not until all this is sorted out, and that can me longgggggggggggggggggggggggg..........
A sample of fourth wall-breaking dialogue from Lucy Gutteridge: "It's like...we're in some bad movie."
.
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