Sadly Over-hyped

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

SINK THE BISMARCK! is a solid British WW2 movie about the hunt for the German battleship and the efforts of the British navy to destroy it. What I liked about this film was the direction, by THE SPY WHO LOVED ME's Lewis Gilbert; he gives it a stark look enhanced by the black and white photography, and helps to make this a film full of documentary realism particularly in the battle scenes.Not that this is a pure action film, because a lot of it is about the logistics of mounting a full-scale operation to pinpoint and attack a battleship. To this end we get an absolutely huge cast of British performers that acts as a genuine who's who of British cinema at the time. The cast ranges from the solid Kenneth More and Laurence Naismith as the leads to the likes of British film regulars Sam Kydd and Michael Ripper playing cameos. The film I can most liken this to is A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, a similar documentary-style film about the sinking of the Titanic, also starring More.

Very early in this movie I could feel the tension in that plotting room, and realise that the cast and crew had captured all the drama, the surprises, the realities, and sometimes, some emotion too.Kenneth More as the newly appointed director of the op's room is a stickler for discipline. He expects all the rules of the Navy to be observed and he doesn't hesitate to tell people off if they transgress.All the acting is superb, I feel like I'm really there too. As the new information comes in and we see the situation develop. We all know the basic story, and the outcome, but this movie goes into the hard work and hard thinking that ensured the final result. The initial planning of the German Navy was over-ambitious? Surely they knew that unless one has a secure coastline, with well equipped bases all over the place, then a Navy is a bit of a waste of time, and effort? Britain had all that, and had the tradition of centuries, and knew how to use it (mostly - the later demise of Prince of Wales near Singapore showed how narrow the thinking was?). Perhaps silly Hitler just assumed that the world power he was aiming at, just HAD to have a big navy? Raeder and other admirals should have advised him?Later in the movie, we see the officers of both sides staring across the ocean at their target - a target that has BIG guns pointing straight at them, ones that when the puff of smoke comes, means that very soon, a huge shell will come screaming straight at them and their comrades - that must have been so scary. The British knew that their "Hood" had been sunk, would they soon be next? And the Germans knew they were hopelessly outnumbered and out-gunned.In some respects, perhaps the whole incident has been over-rated? Was the Bismarck such a terrible threat? I don't recall ever seeing any attempt at a "what-if", ie, if the ships had got to Brest, would they ever have been able to get out again? The British would have lost a lot of aircraft and crews as they attacked, (as they did against the other German ships there) but my guess is that the idea of using battleships to attack the convoys was fatally flawed both from that "bases" point, and also from the "resupply" issues.Germany did arrange for tankers and other ships to meet Bismarck for fuel, ammunition, food, but, the British, through the Enigma cracking, knew where these ships were, and simple sunk them - later. If Bismarck had not been damaged and sunk, perhaps it might have done some damage, but then, would have to return to Brest... and stay there (Yes, but the other ships did scoot through the Channel later)I've read somewhere that half of Germany's submarines never even saw a target ship! So, would the surface ships do any better? Maybe, maybe not? We'll never know.Something else that if different, is the quality of the acting. I've seen other movies from that era and been so disappointed by the Stewart and Niven and others. Is this a difference between Hollywood and Britain? Maybe. Much much later (2001!) Robert Redford, in a DVD bonus feature of "Spy Game", says, (of Catherine McCormack) ..."She has the benefit, as so many English actors have, of... craft, of solid training". So very true.

Advances in aviation and air-to-surface weapons led to the death of lumbering, iron clad battleships. By the early 60s most of these ships were scrapped or decommissioned. As a result, Lewis Gilbert's "Sink the Bismarck!" is one of the last films to feature real, WW2 era British warships. It's also one of the better of many naval movies released in the late 50s and early 60s ("Damn the Defiant!", "The Caine Mutiny", "The Sand Pebbles", "The Bedford Incident" "Run Silent, Run Deep", "The Sea Chase", "The Enemy Below").Adopting a dry (it's a British production, you see), somewhat documentarian tone, the film is a cat and mouse techno-thriller in which the British Admirality, led by Chief of Naval Operations Captain Jonathan Shepard, attempts to intercept and sink the Bismarck, a deadly German battleship (the largest ship ever built by any European country) which has been decimating Allied convoys.Unlike most of these films, the action takes place largely in an underground war room where tactics and orders are cooked up and transmitted to the fleet. It's a chess game, our Chief of Naval Operations, who spends the film looming over maps and war boards, risking thousands of lives with each decision.Unsurprisingly, the film demonizes Admiral Lutjens, the man in command of the Bismarck. He's your typical Nazi villain, bent on destroying the world with his deadly toys. In real life, Lutjens despised both Nazi policies and Hitler, and was deeply pessimistic about both his mission and the capabilities of his super ship. The film is designed to appeal squarely to WW2 veterans and their wide eyed sons. It captures the skill of British naval gunners at the time; the Bismarck may have out-gunned and out-tonned her opponents, but British gunners were notorious for hitting their targets early, fast and precisely. Bismarck was one year old when she bit seabed.7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.

I saw this movie when it came out. I was nine years old living in a tiny Idaho town, and it was great stuff. In different ways, it's still great stuff, despite the melodramatic excesses (Lutjens wasn't a Nazi idiot, and that completely over-the-top scene with the agent tapping out a few more words after the Germans shoot him.) Anything with Kenneth More is worth watching more than once.So, why is the sinking of the Bismarck such a big deal for the Brits? Well, as Johnny Horton's song reminds you at the start, it was May of 1941, and Britain was out of allies. In the movie itself it mentions the loss of Maleme in Crete--a disaster on top of two more disasters, the recent evacuation of the Greek mainland, and Rommel's defeat of the British army remaining in North Africa. The Royal Navy took large losses covering the evacuation from Crete. In other worlds, any betting man in the USA would put his money on Germany whipping the Brits. But these disasters were happening far away and were hard to understand; the Bismarck chase filled American front pages at a very critical moment. It was Revenge at Sea (which, incidentally, is the title of a book about a similar chase-down in World War I.) Now that's the kind of stuff that sells newspapers.