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Showing posts from April, 2018

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #263: Das Boot

Submarine movies are practically their own genre and Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot (1981) is without a doubt one of the best movies in this genre. As the story unfolds you feel the claustrophobia of the crew as they are tossed inside a giant can of sardine that is sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean, and you can practically smell the salt water leaking inside the boat. You also root for this crew despite the fact they are Germans manning a U-boat in World War II and are therefore working for the bad guys. Petersen has supervised different versions of Das Boot and the one I saw was the 209-minute director’s cut. It definitely requires the viewer to take an afternoon and a whole bag of popcorn to see it in one sitting, but a longer version is definitely beneficial to truly be immersed in the experience. By going on a long journey with these characters you get to know them before they get inside their submarine, empathize with them when things start going wrong and hope some of