Reviewed 20/06/00
"Awooogah! Awooogah!, Dive! Dive!"
so says my copy of Silent Service II on the PC.
Submarines. A tin full of people floating under the sea.
I love 'em.
So while I was off on holiday, I headed up to the cinema to see this particular reinactment of genuine WWII heroics, America saving our European butts. (My computer has buttons for Bold, Italics and Underlined, But not Sarcasm. Pity that.)
This film has every single submarine movie cliché ever invented. If it has ever happened in an other submarine movie, then it happens here.
This is not a problem for most of the modern cinema audience, who may have seen Crimson Tide or The Hunt For Red October, but will probably not have seen Above Us The Waves, Run Silent Run Deep, and all those other 40's and 50's classics.
The real problem is that this film does not know which decade it wants to be in. The heroic, "bash the Nazis", 40's; or the personal torment, "war is hell",50's. As a result it falls somewhere in between the two. There has been an attempt to make the characters more than one dimensional, but in the middle of all the slam bang action, much of that depth is either lost or ignored (pun unintended).
It wants to be a mix of The Hunt For Red October and Das Boot, but only manages to capture the look of the latter while missing all the tension of the former.
Still, as I love almost any submarine movie, I had a blast watching this. The two hours just slips by.
7/10
"It's all in German!" (well Duh)
(If you want any proof that U-571 steals from
every Submarine movie ever made,
check out the Kelsey Grammer movie Up Periscope. Remarkably similar central
characters.)
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