rated on a 4-star scale screening venue : odeon ( liverpool city centre ) released in the uk by uip on june 2 , 2000 ; certificate 15 ; 115 minutes ; country of origin usa ; aspect ratio 2 . 35 : 1 directed by jonathan mostow ; produced by dino de laurentiis , martha de laurentiis . written by david ayer , sam montgomery , jonathan mostow . photographed by oliver wood ; edited by wayne wahrman . cast . . . . . matthew mcconaughey . . . . . lieutenant tyler bill paxton . . . . . lieutenant commander mike dahlgren harvey keitel . . . . . chief klough jon bon jovi . . . . . lieutenant pete emmett matthew settle . . . . . larson david keith . . . . . marine major coonan jake weber . . . . . lieutenant hirsch " the moment i get confused , i check out of the movie . when all of a sudden stuff starts happening , and i don't know where i'm at . . . well , i think an audience has , like , an umbilical cord to the screen , and it gets severed when confusion comes in . " --quentin tarantino well put . that's exactly what happened to me right in the middle of " u-571 " . submarine movies are inevitably going to be claustrophobic , sweaty , noisy and dark -- tension turns this into masterful entertainment , confusion kills it . the setting is world war two . a squad in the u . s . navy , led by bill paxton and matthew mcconaughey , have been ordered to seize a german u-boat that carries the radio codes used by nazi submarines to plan attacks on allied shipping . the movie opens with a cliché -- introducing us to all the boys at a big gala , before an urgent telegram comes in , informing them to return to their posts -- but there was still hope for the film at this point , because it has a promising appearance , with period texture perfectly captured . people looked , talked and walked differently in the 1940s ; they had different ways of eating , washing , learning , wearing clothes . many period films just plant obviously contemporary figures among archaic props , but the director of " u-571 " , jonathan mostow , gets the details just right . there is tension on the boat before the big attack . it's a risky assignment , having to seize this sub , and these guys are sailors , not combat soldiers . if it goes wrong , not only is everyone dead , but the germans will change their codes and tighten their security , and that may have implications for the outcome of the war . at the decisive moment of action , when the americans sneak onto the german boat by posing as a supply ship , i got completely lost as to what was going on . one of the sailors plants dynamite somewhere , and we can't tell if he's supposed to be doing so or not . something explodes elsewhere , and the cause is never made clear . someone thinks they've found a code book , and we're not sure if they have or not . a load of americans end up in the water for no reason , and they don't swim the few metres back to their sub , they just scream and drown . why ? this isn't one of those battle scenes that's supposed to disorientate us . it's an incompetently shot beginning to the film's middle section . so , with my umbilical cord severed , i found it hard to watch the rest of the film , with the guys in the submarine shouting impenetrable jargon and running around tight spaces , often with no clear purpose . the scenes i did manage to follow were repetitive and silly : every now and again a new obstacle would come up , and mcconaughey would give an order as to how to combat it . two of the other men would take separate turns to repeat these instructions verbatim , in hushed awe . it would be carried out to the letter , and work . then they'd repeat it back to themselves , and say " phew ! " even some of the visual effects are shoddy . i'm amazed that hollywood seems to be going backwards in this respect -- two or three years ago complimenting a movie's technological wizardry seemed redundant , but now , with releases such as " battlefield earth " on our screens , we seem to have returned to the days of shoddy " star wars " rip-offs . " u-571 " has a torpedo attack that looks like it was shot by a kid throwing toys at a camcorder in the bathtub . and in the shots where people are supposed to be drowning , they look awfully in control : remember the scene with the rubber octopus in " ed wood " ? i feel sympathy for mostow , who spent eight years of his life on this project , and has come out with something that can't be taken seriously . it did fill me with respect for world war two veterans , but only in the sense that if their experiences were anything near as stifling or boring as the movie , then it's amazing they managed to carry on making important strategic decisions . the end credits reveal , by the way , that it was the british , not the americans , who were actually the heroes of the german code-breaking operation . how nice that the filmmakers thought to tell us . copyright ( c ) 2000 ian waldron-mantgani please visit , and encourage others to visit , the uk critic's website at <a href= " http : //members . aol . com/ukcritic " >http : //members . aol . com/ukcritic</a> 
