Expected more

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Nobody talks like this. The characterisation is flat with no clear motivations. Why does the British officer feel so betrayed by the German woman? 'You lied to me' - he's known her for about one day, and she didn't want to give herself away, obviously... The plot plods from one quasi-intellectual soliloquy to another. The whole thing is pretentious playwright preaching which detracts from the sad true incident it is based on.

It's 1942. Old British cruise liner Laconia captained by Sharp (Brian Cox) is transporting 1800 Italian prisoners to Liverpool. They are guarded by cruel Polish guards. There are many civilians including mysterious Hilda Smith (Franka Potente) with a baby who is befriended by Third officer Mortimer. They are torpedoed by a German U-boat whose captain Hartenstein decides to rescue the survivors risking his own boat. As more ships and U-boats join in the rescue, an American plane from Ascension attack.This is a little-known much-ignored story from WWII. It is an interesting story but the movie is too scattered and too long. I imagine this would be a great U-boat story in the vein of Das Boot. A three hour mini-series is too long and the movie has relatively low tension. Also the movie makes the American bombing a mistake by a young crew rather than a deliberate action. This seems like an excuse more than a realistic assessment.

The portrayal of the American flyers bombing the sub was over the top. Some Germans like to say 'You had your murderers too' which seems to assuage guilt for them for their ancestors' crimes against humanity. Unless one cannot see the difference between the two sides, let me state it clearly - The Germans had institutionalized murder from the very top to the bottom, with the occasional protesting humanitarian below, their opponents were institutionalized humanitarians with the occasional murderer in the ranks. I'm sorry, but having American flyers laughing after the bombing and saying "Let's go back and strafe them", that ranks in my book as propaganda and if it were more truthful it's probably something a German flyer would have said, since it was part of all their campaigns to strafe civilians fleeing the fighting. They strafed, in order, Polish, Belgians, Parisians, and Russians to clog the roads with panicked civilians, and to force them in a given direction to block advancing armies, much like a sheepdog biting at the heels of animals. It's not possible to enjoy this movie while knowing the facts of how the Germans behaved in WWII. Also not historically accurate is the fact that an odd triangular cross exists in place of the Nazi swastika, and the Kapitaen gives a traditional instead of the 'Heil Hitler' salute while receiving a medal from Doenitz, due to the fact that both are illegal to portray in Germany today. With good reason.

1. The movie focuses on one of a few moments when Germans and Italians could claim moral superiority over Allies during the IIWW. What the movie makers forget and do not show on purpose is why the "heroic" Uboot commander is hunting British merchant ship. He is hunting it in name of no less than Adolf Hitler. The "heroic" crew of Uboot witnessed treatment of (mostly Polish) slaves in Germany and in French ports, with high probability they enjoyed the services of sexual slaves (in 1939-1941 mostly French and Polish) in Kriegsmarine brothels, they used goods stolen from Jews and Poles etc. 2. The villains of the movie are Polish soldiers, who escort Italians. Again it remains unclear where those people come from. It is simple: after fighting in Poland, they left Poland, via Hungary got to France to fight Germans, then some of them fought in Narvik (as a Polish unit), got back to Britain and went to Africa to fight Rommel. Their families got executed and enslaved (Germans executed 15 000 Poles in one place called Piasnica in 1939-40 to name an example). Their sons got sent as slaves to Germany (approx 2 million Polish slaves), their daughters raped. They could nourish certain hate against Axis soldiers. 3.It remains to wait for a movie about Sonderkommando Jewish prisoners, Russian kapos in KZ and heroic SS-men who protect KZ-prisoners from them. There could be one such case - so the movie will be based on facts.It is all about choosing which facts are to be depicted. 4. To put it short: it is an abominable dance on graves because not a minute is devoted to the context of the story.5. The captain of Laconia deserves certain respect but he fought for Nazi Deutschland. Polish, Belorussian, Russian peasants who risked their lives as guerilla fighters had more courage than this idealized Uboot captain. They knew their survival chances were non-existent but they refused to comply.