Robert J. Maxwell We don't hear much about the sinking of the British troop ship Laconia because the story ends neither with an Allied victory nor a glorious last stand. We can hear about the battles of Britain or Pearl Harbor or Midway but not the sinking of the Laconia, any more than we can stand to hear about the battles of the Java Sea, Savo Island, or Kasserine Pass. As human beings we prefer our movies to be cooked rather than raw.The facts in the case of the Laconia are clear. It sailed from Cairo for Liverpool, a passenger liner converted to troop ship, but this time carrying only civilians and more than a thousand Italian prisoners. A U-boat commanded by Ken Duken as Werner Hartenstein, not knowing what the ship carried, torpedoes and sinks it. Approaching the flotsam, Hartenstein and crew grasp the situation and pick up several hundred survivors, berthing some aboard the U-boat and towing the rest in a daisy chain of lifeboats. Hartenstein, to the bemusement of Admiral Doenitz in Paris, sends out a radio signal on a British frequency in plain English, explaining the circumstances and promising that any ship of any nationality that approaches to receive the prisoners will not be attacked.The British receive the message but decide not to reply. Instead they notify the US Air Force base on Asencion Island about the location of the missing Laconia without mentioning the U-boat which, by this time, is crowded with passengers on deck and below and sports large sheets displaying red crosses. A B-24 from Asencion Island sees nothing of the Laconia but does spot the U-boat. The American crew is young and untested. Nobody seems able to read the Morse code lights from the U-boat, but they do recognize it as an enemy submarine and drop five bombs on or near it, causing casualties.Hartenstein reluctantly puts his remaining passengers in lifeboats and tells them to stay in position and wait for the arrival of a Vichy French rescue ship. The rescue happens apace, after further deaths in the barren lifeboats. Hartenstein's boat is damaged but makes it back to port, where he is decorated. However, the incident prompts an order from high command that no more rescues will ever be attempted except for ship's officers or chief engineers. Hartenstein is lost on a later mission.The language problem is handled deftly. The Germans mostly speak German; the British speak only English. There are a couple of sub plots but none involve a developing romance, Gott sei Dank. It's a miniseries but it must have been an expensive one because the visual effects are unusually good and the performances are uniformly fine. If the direction by Uwe Janson has any flaws it's that he's decided to use too many choker close ups, but that's about it. He doesn't glamorize the actors. When they've been torpedoed and are bobbing in the sea they look like hell.The central figure is Duken's modest and human Hartenstein. Duken is very impressive and not just because he has a sympathetic role. He has a trim beard, he's young, reasonably good looking, and has a pair of piercing eyes which he deploys magnificently. When he fixes his gaze on someone, it seems as if he's looking inside him. But he's matter of fact about the circumstances and stern when necessary. Famke Potente has a marvelously expressive face and uses her expressions judiciously. Some films about enemy submarines must have an ideological zealot aboard. Not this one. That would be too easy. The crew member who wants to stick to the rules, who believes U-boats are there to sink and kill the enemy is the boat's chief engineer, Matthias Koeberlin, but he's not an evil figure. His arguments are not humane but are pragmatic. And he shows a happy aptitude for teaching the kids to speak a few words of German. It's a difficult role and he manages it well.The film is based on a true story although some characters are surely fictional, as much of the dialog must be. But, an excess bit of sentimentality aside, it's an excellent example of just how good a miniseries can be, and the story is worth telling -- and retelling.

winopaul Thank gosh the librarians put this out on the end cap, or I would have missed this gem. Don't be put off by the clunky cover art. This is an excellent dramatization of the Laconia Incident, see Wikipedia for the details.This was done back in 2010, and I don't know that is before everyone starting saying TV is getting more important than movies, but this sure builds the case. It is after the The Wire and during Breaking Bad and all the other things people credit for TV's ascendancy.Do get the 2-disk DVD so you can enjoy this at your leisure. The actors were unknown to me, but of such great talent it did not matter. I agree this was not an anti-American film, after all, the consensus is it was an American war crime to attack the rescue effort. More disturbing than the war crime was the cover-up. Anyone can make a mistake in the heat of battle, but only a corrupt organization pretends it did not happen.Rather than getting all cronied up, I think this is less about choosing sides than a study in the variability of human behavior. It shows how middle management in a vicious organization can act with decency, and middle management in a virtuous organization can act shamefully. How both those organizations reacted to these events gives food for thought.Another real plus is that the DVD comes on two disks. This means they spent more money rather than use strong compression. As a result, the rippling ocean and other high-bit-rate scenes look great, even up-scaled to HD.

SnoopyStyle It's 1942. Old British cruise liner Laconia captained by Sharp (Brian Cox) is transporting 1800 Italian prisoners to Liverpool. They are guarded by cruel Polish guards. There are many civilians including mysterious Hilda Smith (Franka Potente) with a baby who is befriended by Third officer Mortimer. They are torpedoed by a German U-boat whose captain Hartenstein decides to rescue the survivors risking his own boat. As more ships and U-boats join in the rescue, an American plane from Ascension attack.This is a little-known much-ignored story from WWII. It is an interesting story but the movie is too scattered and too long. I imagine this would be a great U-boat story in the vein of Das Boot. A three hour mini-series is too long and the movie has relatively low tension. Also the movie makes the American bombing a mistake by a young crew rather than a deliberate action. This seems like an excuse more than a realistic assessment.

rationalists from bloodlands 1. The movie focuses on one of a few moments when Germans and Italians could claim moral superiority over Allies during the IIWW. What the movie makers forget and do not show on purpose is why the "heroic" Uboot commander is hunting British merchant ship. He is hunting it in name of no less than Adolf Hitler. The "heroic" crew of Uboot witnessed treatment of (mostly Polish) slaves in Germany and in French ports, with high probability they enjoyed the services of sexual slaves (in 1939-1941 mostly French and Polish) in Kriegsmarine brothels, they used goods stolen from Jews and Poles etc. 2. The villains of the movie are Polish soldiers, who escort Italians. Again it remains unclear where those people come from. It is simple: after fighting in Poland, they left Poland, via Hungary got to France to fight Germans, then some of them fought in Narvik (as a Polish unit), got back to Britain and went to Africa to fight Rommel. Their families got executed and enslaved (Germans executed 15 000 Poles in one place called Piasnica in 1939-40 to name an example). Their sons got sent as slaves to Germany (approx 2 million Polish slaves), their daughters raped. They could nourish certain hate against Axis soldiers. 3.It remains to wait for a movie about Sonderkommando Jewish prisoners, Russian kapos in KZ and heroic SS-men who protect KZ-prisoners from them. There could be one such case - so the movie will be based on facts.It is all about choosing which facts are to be depicted. 4. To put it short: it is an abominable dance on graves because not a minute is devoted to the context of the story.5. The captain of Laconia deserves certain respect but he fought for Nazi Deutschland. Polish, Belorussian, Russian peasants who risked their lives as guerilla fighters had more courage than this idealized Uboot captain. They knew their survival chances were non-existent but they refused to comply.