Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

garundaboink 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.

jbeckj Over time many movies have pictured how the German Navy and Army conducted themselves in WWII. I don't write Nazies, because that is a political party and in general the Germans fought for their country. That being said, all sides of the war had their share of murders. If you think the allies never did anything wrong, you are very naive.The submarine part of the German navy was led by Donitz and banned any political propaganda from the sub pens and submarines.Its very known that if British and German submarines would meet, they would greet each other and part, due to respect for each others profession.The movie itself shows the balance between being humane and full fill your obligations as a submariner.

starzandi I couldn't disagree more with the other review already posted.I found it a very convincing piece of drama, especially the u-boat scenes were reminiscent of the other great u-boat drama "Das Boot" with the camaraderie on the sub.The acting, especially from Ken Duken as Hartenstein, was subtle and excellent.There were some brilliantly acted, moving scenes with Brian Cox, Andrew Buchan and Franka Potente. There are some slightly comic scenes that add a bit of life as it is to the drama.Alan Bleasdale took his story from research in many survivors stories and created his view of the Sinking of the Laconia. It was much more true to the real histories than the majority of war- dramas I know(even " Das Boot" took liberties).I don't care for the exact badges and stripes on the navy uniforms.Those are minor details(visible only for experts) that don't detract the average viewer from the story.But careful: this review is for the UK-version of the film only . The German TV-version is different(edit,music, language)!!!

guard_jamie I was very much looking forward to this, as the adverts for it suggested that it could be an excellent little historical drama, the like of which the BBC regularly produce.I could not have been more wrong.I'm aware that such productions are always subject to budget constraints, but the CGI-effects were distinctly dodgy - I was very much aware that they were CGI. The clothing worn by the cast was another severe let down. It was often too pristine, in some cases ill-fitting, and occasionally utterly unauthentic for the 1940s. The greatest issue with the production however lay in the script and the acting. The acting was often wooden, and unbelievable. The script was clunky, and too 'modern' in language and attitudes held by the protagonists - the production I saw did not feel like it was portraying the 1940s. The script also suffered for concentrating on too many characters, which resulted in my not being emotionally engaged and actually caring whether they survived the sinking or not (this wasn't helped by very few of them being played as particularly pleasant people). Another particular problem was the number of simply unbelievable events that are shown throughout the film - the 'crossing the equator' scene in the U-Boat suggests a SERIOUS lack of discipline aboard, and the pep-talk by one of the U-Boat officers to the victim of the crew's bullying about being a team-player is very 21st century. The cringe-worthy performance of 'home on the range' or some such western song by the awkward British officer was very odd, and did not feel very 1940s at all - and I did find myself wondering where he got the costume from on a boat in the middle of a war? The portrayal of the Polish troops as nothing but violent thugs was a gross misrepresentation and offensive.All in all, I was severely disappointed, feeling that the bravery and sacrifice shown on both sides during the real sinking of the SS Laconia was totally ignored for an over-dramatic, literally unbelievable piece of hokum that looked and felt like it was a poorly-written 21st century take on one of the saddest story's of the war.