Wonderful character development!

not as good as all the hype

Boring

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The claustrophobic world of a WWII German U-boat; boredom, filth, and sheer terror. Das Boot showcases a very realistic and powerful catastroph that a U-Boat faced during the World War II but the destruction, death and hunger that those men faced. As far as direction goes this is a very stylish film with great underwater sequences but also a very good looking movie in general, the soundtrack was also really good especially the end credits one and as far as perfomances go i think Jürgen Prochnow was the stand out of the entire movie. Now as flaws go? the 209 running time will bother some people perhaps even tire them a little bit but overall still a really good film. (7/10)

Das Boot (The Boat) is an excellent German film about WW2. This movie is great from start to finish and is full of action and drama. The setting is dark and gloomy and there are many very intense and terrifying scenes. The characters were interesting, but they were not the main focus. The main focus of this film was the overall experience of the war and people fighting in it.The camera angles are excellent and really enhance the story to make it feel as if you are there. The plot is great and it does not drag on. This movie was not short. It was a bit long compared to other movies. But, it actually could have been even a bit longer as I was engaged and enjoying myself the entire time. If you have 2 and a half hours to spare and want the time to go by quickly, then watch this film.

A young reporter finds himself in over his head when he joins the crew of a Nazi U-boat to document their experiences in this World War II thriller from Wolfgang Petersen. With the vast majority of action confined to the submarine, 'Das Boot' has many intense moments with the claustrophobic nature of the surroundings heavily emphasised. There are several marvelous tracking shots that run up and down the submarine interiors and the constant sharp sounds of the watercraft provide an eerie reminder of just how far removed the crew are from land. Clocking in at over three hours long though, there are invariably lulls in the action and overall, the film feels like more of an episodic collection of melodramatic underwater events than an airtight narrative. Jürgen Prochnow's captain is also the only character we come to really know in any depth. What the film does very well though is paint its young Nazi characters as very human with all the love anxieties, fears and worries that young people have. Especially interesting is the way they are able to quickly switch from partying in their time off to being at attention during emergencies. The film is also topped off with a surefire memorable ending. 'Das Boot' might not offer the strongest narrative or characters out there, but it provides an experience like few other motion pictures with its graphic portrait of submarine life.

In the entire history of cinema, there have only been two perfect war movies: Apocalypse Now, and Das Boot. I watched Apocalypse Now /Redux several years ago, and yesterday I finished the 3.5-hour Director's Cut of Das Boot.The submarine subgenre goes all the way back to 1915's The Secret of the Submarine, and has not improved much since then. Sweden gave it the old college try in 1952 with Ubåt 39, but nobody's quite sure if this is a good submarine movie or not because it has only ever been seen by the Swedes, who refuse to discuss it.1958 brought us Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster in Run Silent, Run Deep, which Americans thought was fantastic, and pretty much everyone else thought was 'meh' because it deviated so wildly from the plot of the book.The big ones that most people remember are The Hunt for Red October (1990) by Tom 'I-Never-Met-An-Offensive-Stereotype-I-Didn't-Like' Clancy, and Crimson Tide (1995) by Richard 'P' Henrick. These formulaic Cold War paranoia flicks were acceptable for the time, but their clunky plots and simmering racial tensions have not aged well.Enter Das Boot.Wolfgang Petersen's 1981 WWII classic has gone down in history as the greatest submarine film ever made, and is unlikely to be surpassed before the heat death of the universe. Starring Jürgen Prochnow as Kapitänleutnant Henrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, Herbert Grönemeyer as Leutnant Werner, and Klaus Wennemann as Leitender Ingenieur Fritz Grade, this exceptional film is in a league of its own.Filmed entirely with practical special effects using an advanced custom made hand-held Arriflex camera with proto-Steadicam technology, Das Boot took two years to make, and was finally cut from over 330,000 metres of exposed film.With a budget of 32 million Deutsche Marks, it was the second most expensive German film the world had ever seen (second only to Metropolis) and remains one of the most expensive today.The genius of Das Boot is its timelessness. Even today there is almost nothing in the film that looks dated, though the colour saturation is a little weak by current standards. The cinematography is astonishingly good, particularly considering the conditions under which Das Boot was shot.The performances are superlative. Prochnow is the standout, but Grönemeyer and Wennemann are not far behind. Erwin Leder deserves a special mention as Obermaschinist Johann, whose steadily deteriorating mental state is a masterclass of method acting.Above all, it is the gritty realism of Das Boot that captivates audiences and keeps the movie fresh. The crew grow beards over time; their faces become drawn and haggard; their eyes become sunken and bloodshot; their clothes become dirty, and remain so.The longer you watch, the more it draws you in. After the first 60 minutes you can already feel the damp heat, smell the stink of diesel, and sense the flexing of metal plates as the U-boat approaches crush depth.There is not a single wasted minute in this film, which (like all the best war movies) is stridently anti-war.I rate Das Boot at 33.3 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as an unbeatable 10/10 on IMDb.