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DVDs
Das Boot
 By
Richard Moore
During
World War II, the 40,000 men of the German submarine packs hunting
down transport ships came closer to winning the war for their country
than any other arm of the military. By 1941, Britain's lifeline
- the convoy routes across the Atlantic from America - were being
strangled by the success of the German U-boats in sinking merchant
ships.
Millions
of tonnes of vital supplies were destroyed and the Battle of the
Atlantic was looking bleak for the Allies.
Then,
with new sonar and anti-submarine techniques, the struggle turned
in the Allies' favour and it was the turn of the U-boat packs to
suffer.
And
suffer they did. Trapped in their cold, diesel-fume-filled cylinders,
the submariners found themselves on the wrong end of technology
and, by war's end, had lost 30,000 of the 40,000 who went to sea.
The
fear, claustrophobia, carnage and sheer terror of the submarine
war has never been more graphically shown than with Wolfgang Petersen's
Das Boot.
You
follow the sailors as they sail, fresh-faced and eager, from La
Rochelle, through their savage blooding at the hands of Allied destroyers
and into the very gates of Hell as they are depth-charged almost
out of existence.
The
photography and sound effects in Das Boot are stunning, with
each discipline trying to outdo each other as to which succeeds
better in conveying the rising tension within the besieged crew.
Detail
on the U-boat is remarkable. Petersen boasted that every single
screw in the submarine was accurate. The set itself was created
high up on a platform so that it could be dropped at 45 degrees
and shaken around to represent the force of exploding depth charges
and huge waves.
It
is easy to see why Das Boot is the highest-grossing German
language movie of all time and it is a stunning portrayal of men
at war.
Conclusion:
Movie:
90%
DVD
Extras: 50%
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