U-571 (film)

U-571
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJonathan Mostow
Screenplay by
Story byJonathan Mostow
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyOliver Wood
Edited byWayne Wahrman
Music byRichard Marvin
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release date
  • April 21, 2000 (2000-04-21)
Running time
116 minutes
Countries
  • United States
  • France
Languages
  • English
  • German
Budget$62 million
Box office$127 million

U-571 is a 2000 submarine film directed by Jonathan Mostow from a screenplay he co-wrote with Sam Montgomery and David Ayer. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, Jon Bon Jovi, Jake Weber and Matthew Settle. The film follows a World War II German submarine boarded by American submariners to capture her Enigma cipher machine.

Although the film was financially successful and received generally positive reviews from critics,[1][2] winning the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, the fictitious plot attracted substantial criticism. British sailors from HMS Bulldog captured the first naval Enigma machine from U-110 in the North Atlantic in May 1941, seven months before the United States entered the war and three years before the US Navy captured U-505 and its Enigma machine.[3] Anger over the film’s inaccuracies reached the House of Commons, where the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, called the film an "affront" to British sailors.[4]

  1. ^ "U-571". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 5, 2024.
  2. ^ "The 73rd Academy Awards (2001) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Archived from the original on September 24, 2014. Retrieved November 19, 2011.
  3. ^ Moseley, Ray (March 4, 1999), "Hollywood Insults British Intelligence: Captain's Son Says Film About Capture Of Nazi Encoding Device Is Distortion Of History", Chicago Tribune
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference blair was invoked but never defined (see the help page).