I'm with Mary on this one. I have watched it countless times and still don't understand why the critics panned it. The special effects are really good (sorry to disagree Mary!) and the cast and acting are top notch. I read up on the making of this film and now I'm pretty sure of myself when I say it was panned just because the director also made the "Soccer Dog" movies. So I guess because a guy makes family films that automatically makes him a director that nobody respects. I know I'm right. Because this film is really good. It went straight to video, so automatically that also disqualifies it from getting any respect. It never ceases to crack me up how everyone automatically starts writing reviews on the Internet Movie site about how terrible the film is. I think they're a bunch of zombies who didn't really pay attention to the film but let critics and other robots make their mind up for them!
The cast is some of the best German and American actors ever, including Til Schweiger (who I've been madly in love with since "SLC Punk!"), Thomas Kretschmann (I hope I spelt it right, who got stuck playing a stereotyped Nazi "bad guy" in "U-571"), William H. Macy, Scott Caan (He did fine in spite of being described as a horrible performance), and others in smaller roles like Ole Thorson, AJ Buckley and Carmine Giovinazzo (both of the rapidly decaying "CSI NY"), Rene Heger, Sam Huntington, Ian Somerhalder and Jeremy Sisto. All of the actors and characters were engaging and believable and offered something to the story. The only prominent female character is the wife of Macy's character, played by Lauren Holly. In spite of one rather hokey scene (where she appears to Macy in a vision), she plays the character nicely.
I really didn't see any faults with production design either. Nothing looked "too new" as one critic put it. Things looked worn, torn, beat up and realistic. Maybe Mary is right about something else: the Nazis and Hitler are very hated subjects. It's hard to imagine a German u-boat captain crying over his lost children. It's hard to picture anyone who followed Hitler's politics to be anything except a mindless killing machine. Maybe this film made people mad. It was criticized for so many different reasons, but they seem like stupid petty reasons. I think rather that people disliked the story, even though it was fact-based. I for one liked it very much.
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