I am a big fan of both submarine movies and movies about the second world war. So with this movie - which combines both - I was really looking forward to go and watch it. And with a cast including Dolph Lundgren, what could go wrong?!
Well, the issue is that this movie has several really big issues...
First of all, it is the poor visual effects (VFX) that they used in "creating" ships and planes. You can so easily see that they are fake that you continuously focus on this shortcoming. Honestly, the VFX are of such a poor level that a modern game looks more realistic during gameplay than this movie.
Second, it is the way the actors speak. From the start of the movie they tend to "germanize" the english. And it just sounds so totally fake. Why didn't they chose for a format where the actors all speak german in only the first couple of minutes of the movie, after which they switch to english?! I have seen this exact principle being used in the famous movie "The Hunt for the Red October", another submarine movie where they switched in this way from russian to english.
Third, it is the very obvious mistakes that they make. For instance, they show the so-called "Atlantic Fleet Command"-building in the USA. But you can see very clearly that the building says "Federal Reserve", meaning that it is a building from the central bank. With all efforts that are put in VFX, was it such a difficult task to remove the letters "federal reserve" from the building?! Something like that is even basic functionality in e.g. Adobe Photoshop.
Instead of wasting the production budget on expensive actors like Dolph Lundgren, it would have been way better spent towards solving the above-mentioned issues. Hiring expensive actors and neglecting the basics, seems to be some kind of recent trend. You can also see it with many - if not all - of the movies in which Bruce Willis features. There seems to be group of producers whom just prefer to spend big on actors instead of getting the basics right. And these movies do not even deserve the credit to be called "B-movie"... I think this type of movie deserves to called something like C-movie, where the "C" stands for all the Cash that is literally wasted by using expensive actors.
I should mention that the storyline of this movie is quite okay. This shows that this movie had way more potential if they had just spent the budget more wisely.
This movie clearly doesn't deserve a rating that is even close to sufficient. Such scores (5/10 and above) are meant for movies that meet all the basics. To give this movie still some credit for the storyline, I think a rating of 3/10 is what it maximally deserves. Spending any time and money on seeing this movie is just a waste...
