U-571 (2000) More at IMDb Pro »

Defenders of this film, stop whining that "it's just a movie." Fellow Americans, stop being so friggin' defensive when people complain about the pathetic, insipid, insulting posturing we do.

By now anyone who's read anything about this movie knows it was the English and not the Americans who captured the Enigma machine (and also that at the time the story allegedly takes place, the US wasn't even in the war).

But here is the most evil thing about "U-571" -- director Jonathan Mostow in many interviews has complained that the great submarine movie "Das Boot" was a lie because it portrayed the German crew as sailors, soldiers, human beings and not Nazis. This is why he opens his film with the U-boat crew gunning down a lifeboat of helpless, unarmed Allied survivors. Jonathan Mostow perpetuates every lie, every war-time propaganda fabrication, every stereotype ever perpetrated about the enemy. During wartime such propaganda is necessary... but this is sixty years later. No one is in any way excusing the monstrousness of the Nazis. But it is stupid and blind to portray every single German as cut from that same blood-stained cloth. Even English viewers -- who have far, far more reason to hate the Nazis than any American -- have been quick to point out the foulness of Mostow's vision.