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U-571 (film)

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U-571 is a 2000 movie directed by Jonathan Mostow, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, Jon Bon Jovi, Jack Noseworthy, Will Estes, and Tom Guiry. In the movie, a German submarine is boarded in 1942 by disguised American submariners seeking to capture its Enigma cipher machine.

Contents

Cast

rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Historical inaccuracies

The Enigma codes had first been broken by the Poles in 1932, and this knowledge was passed over to the British and French in 1939. An Enigma machine and associated documents containing key material were first recovered from a U-boat in May 1941 — before the United States' entry into World War II — by the British who captured U-110. The British also captured material from U-559 in 1942. The U.S. Navy did seize German Naval Enigma material in June 1944 when it captured U-505 (the U.S. Navy's first capture of an enemy vessel at sea in 129 years).

The film caused irritation in Britain. The families of Royal Navy Lieutenant Tony Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier, who lost their lives while retrieving the Enigma from U559, were particularly upset. Critics also argued that U-571 failed to portray history correctly because, in total, there were some 15 captures of Naval Enigma material during World War II, of which the Americans and Canadians each carried out one (U-505 and U-774, respectively), while the British performed the rest. While the British captures from submarines and weather trawlers provided critical information for breaking Enigma, by the time of the American and Canadian captures, the Allies were reading Naval Enigma routinely. Moreover, the American capture of U-505 by a destroyer captain on the eve of D-Day might have jeopardized Operation Overlord. However, as acknowledged by the film-makers, the story of the film is entirely fictional.

Shortly after the release of the film, BBC radio interviewed a former British naval officer who had been involved in the recovery of cipher-key tables from a German submarine that was on the point of sinking; he commented that the film was entertaining, though it had nothing to do with historical fact.

The unlikely sudden appearance of a single-engined German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter and a destroyer in mid-Atlantic defies explanation. By 1941, the Atlantic had become a virtual no-go area for Germany's few remaining capital surface ships, so it is highly unlikely that a destroyer would be cruising alone in such an area. As the German Navy had no aircraft carriers during World War II, the only German aircraft capable of flying so far out in the Atlantic were large land-based maritime patrol aircraft such as the four-engined Focke-Wulf 200 Condor.

The movie has also been criticized for a scene in which the U-boat crewmen machine-gun Allied merchant crewmen who have survived their ship's sinking, killing them in cold blood as they float helplessly in their lifeboat. The implication is that the killing of survivors was typical U-boat behavior, however critics of the U-571 movie point out that this is an incorrect depiction of typical U-boat crew behavior. In contrast to the depiction of U-boat men in the movie, U-boat crewman almost universally followed the accepted rules of war; in a number of incidents, they helped survivors with food, directions and occasionally medical aid. Assistance to survivors only stopped after Admiral Karl Dönitz issued the "Laconia order" following a US attack on U-boats transporting injured POWs under a flag of truce. Infact, out of several thousand sinkings of merchantmen in World War II, there is only one documented case of a U-boat crew deliberately attacking the ship's survivors: that of the U-852, a Type IXD2 U-boat under Kpt.lt. Heinz-Wilhehm Eck, whose crew attacked survivors of the Greek ship Peleus.

There was a real German submarine designated U-571, but that vessel was never involved in events depicted in the film.

Redeeming features of the film

None noted.

Cut scenes

The movie was originally rated “R” due to a scene where Lt. Pete Emmett (Jon Bon Jovi) is decapitated by flying debris. To get a “PG-13”, the shot was redone with Emmett this time knocked overboard by flying debris. This led to many audience members not knowing what happened to his character. A death scene was also filmed for Maj. Matthew Coonan (David Keith), but the effect did not work well so it was cut from the film [Interview with Jonathan Mostow].

See also

References

External links

 

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