In Enemy Hands

It has an interesting story executed poorly. I couldn't figure out if this was supposed to be a serious drama or light camp. Acting was average with standouts William H Macy carrying the film as well as the German executive officer. Still it actually moved well for me and I was entertained by it. I have a keen interest in U-boats having traveled the world to see them as well as the US fleet subs. The feats performed in this movie by the submarines underwater is essentially science fiction in pre-1945 submarine warfare. Loads of other technical errors as well in the production, but in a quick and dirty film who cares. It was made on a budget and that's that. So if you want to really see reality, Das Boot still stands alone. I give it 5 starts, for sloppy production, but still recommend it over most of the garbage on Netflix.

Every movie doesn't have to be academy award material. In fact many if not most movies try to be entertaining with interesting ideas. This is one of those movies. A WWII submarine backdrop that forces an alliances between two fighting sides for mutual survival. Ya, sub experts can pick apart some of the tech and tactics but that's not the point of the movie. It's like going to a stage play and picking apart the stage props as not being realistic. It's not the stage but the story that is interesting in this movie. As the world faces global warming, expensive energy, nuclear issues we all can take a lessen that working together to solve our problems would be far more productive than trying to kill each other (the under lying story of this movie).

I just rented this film (on DVD) because I liked the cast. In the case of William H Macy, I just trust his choice in scripts. Whatever he chooses to play, should I choose to watch. We seem to have the same taste somehow. So I hoped it would work again with this film.

I'm not interested in submarines, I'm not eager to watch films set in any war, I'm not even particularly fond of Til Schweiger, our German heartthrob, although Thomas Kretschmann is definitely an interesting actor. One to watch, believe me. But still this film fascinated me. So trusting Macy's choice worked once again.

The story had a couple of twists which I always like, dialogue in two languages (one third German, two thirds English) which is even better, and quite well developed (main) characters. All this makes a good film, not brilliant, but good. Good craftsmanship. I liked the German actors's "natural" accents, thankfully they were not forced to have worse accents than they normally have. And I liked in particular that at least in the leading roles it were Germans the filmmakers hired and not some Swedes, Americans or Britons replacing them like in other films like Ronin (Swede= Stellan Skarsgard) or Die Hard (Briton= Alan Rickman).

So, I think I can recommend this film, even to people outside the probable target group of young men. This film is not so much about war and fighting, but about the possibility of enemies working together and even becoming friends if you get the chance to get to know each other better and realizing, we are all humans after all.

8 out of 10.

His bad acting and dbag personality just tanked this movie for me

This movie is a watchable one. It's not really a memorable one though but when you decide to watch it, it won't bore you.

When the movie began I was kind of worried. The editing was poor and the acting horrible B-movie like and it had a made-for-TV kind of look. But thankfully all those things improved later as the movie progressed.

It's obvious that the budget wasn't very big since they had to use stock footage from movies like "U-571" and even "Down Periscope". They also used stock footage from real WW II Destroyers and other boats which was pretty obvious at times, it was kind of amateur-like and unrealistic the way it was edited into the movie.

The story is pretty solid, despite some awfully weak dialog at times. It was at first kind of weird that the movie focused on both the Americans and Germans in the same way but later in the movie it becomes obvious why. The movie mostly fails to become tense but still its perfect good entertainment to watch all.

Not a must see by any means but when you decide to see it nevertheless, you will be fairly entertained. And hey it has got William H. Macy and Thomas Kretschmann and some other well known actors in small roles in it, which makes this movie absolutely, very well watchable.

7/10

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