| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Wolfgang Petersen's direction is an exercise in pure craftsmanship. [Director's Cut]
|
| 100 |
Los Angeles Times
The most convincing war movie ever made.
|
| 100 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
At once a devastating condemnation of war and an exciting action film...The additional running time only adds to Petersen's masterfully bleak, claustrophobic atmosphere. Das Boot is by no means a pleasant experience, but it's an intelligent and emotionally gripping one that you won't forget. [Director's Cut]
|
| 100 |
ReelViews
Takes all of the drama and suspense inherent in a submarine-based story and delivers it in a near-perfect package, establishing Das Boot as not just a terrific adrenaline rush, but one of the best movies ever made. [Director's Cut]
|
| 100 |
USA Today
A great movie just got greater, thanks to this thorough restoration. [Director's Cut; 27 June 1997, p.D3]
|
| 100 |
Washington Post
You emerge from this experience rather like a returning U-boat crewman -- drained, blinking in the light, but oddly triumphant. [Director's cut]
|
| 90 |
Salon.com
Max Garrone
Absolutely devastating filmmaking that makes you simultaneously feel the glory and the absolute futility of war. [Director's Cut]
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
One of the most suspenseful films of all time, its wartime action setting makes it easy to forget it's also one of the most spiritually righteous. [Director's Cut]
|
| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
Sweaty and claustrophobic, exciting and horrifying at the same time, it never lets us forget we're riding aboard a giant, primitive tin can, a hunk of industrial machinery that mingles the illusion of omnipotence with the reality of a floating prison cell. [Director's Cut]
|
| 80 |
TV Guide
Staff (Not Credited)
Racing through the sub, squeezing through tiny openings, director Wolfgang Petersen's camera brilliantly evokes the claustrophobia and clamor of undersea battle.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
As torpedoes shoot through the seas and depth charges pass by, carrying their whining cargo of destruction, Das Boot brings the presence of death to within a whisper of the eardrum.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A visually spectacular film, distinguished by strong performances and brilliant Steadicam photography that snakes through the U-boat as its patrols the North Atlantic during World War II. [Director's Cut]
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
The film has no qualities beyond its formal polish--and its careful avoidance (or rather, displacement) of the moral and political issues involved can seem too crafty, too convenient.
|
| 60 |
Washington Post
Unlike Hollywood's hygienic undersea dramas, Das Boot graphically depicts the nasty intimacy of a long mission.
|
| 60 |
Variety
Staff (Not Credited)
A descent into the pit of hell with slim odds of ever returning.
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