Movie Review: 'U-571'
Pros: Good cast. Nice special effects. Nifty (if derivative) action tale. Cons: Not the American "Das Boot." Some weakly-written scenes. Clichés. A long time ago, back in the 1970s and when Mom was a loyal subscriber to Reader's Digest Condensed Books, I read the abridged version of British novelist Douglas Reeman's His Majesty's U-Boat, the American edition's title of Go In and Sink! Because we gave away most of our Condensed Books volumes before our last move and also due to the passage of time, I only have very dim memories of Reeman's novel, which focused on a German U-boat which is captured intact by the Royal Navy and then used against the Axis in the Battle of the Atlantic. Though purely fictional, Reeman's 1975 novel seems to have been based on several real-life incidents involving British personnel and German submarines, some of which resulted in major intelligence coups for the Allied war effort in t...