Rent Das Boot: Series 2 (2020)

Lukewarm recooking of the red hot original movie. - Das Boot: Series 2 review by Jed

Is it a rule of the Universe that a good film will automatically produce

a series of weak remakes ? Here we have echoes of that great original film

(Even distant echoes of that great musical under-water theme) but

writers desperate to extend the property borrow from Red October

(surrendering their U-Boat to the Americans) and lose a lot of the

power of both the book (Great in Translation) and the original movie

in trying to "open up" an under-sea story. I went back to my copy of

the original - and Yes! it really does hold up as well as I remembered.

Excellent Series 2 of a Tense Exiting WWII Submarine TV Drama - Das Boot: Series 2 review by PV

I really enjoyed this as series 1. Focus on the fact it is fiction nor documentary, so homes in on the characters, their flaws, their journeys and arcs, how they change etc.

The German Navy never swore an oath of The Fuhrer himself as the army and airforce did, and of course the SS/AD (seen here in the French police). That did not mean they were not loyal to the Nazi regime and their Fatherland of course - the latter always. They had to be - 75% of U-boat crew died, esp when the Brits worked out how to tget em later in the war - early in WWII the U-boats (seawolves) sank so many ships supplying Britain in Atlantic convoys. Then they got that back and more.

Mutiny on ships are rare. Mostly it does not happen, When it does it is drama, as here - no pretence this is a true story. The relationship between a German and a black nightclub singer is unlikely but I am willing to suspend my disbelief AND THANK GOODNESS the producers have NO truck with nonsense colourblind casting on U-boats at least!

The mission of the U-boat captain is drama too, unlikely, though this film dares show the way many in the US and France too supported the Nazis and helped them - and the Irish especially, so that is accurate.

Anyway, it's written by, amongst others, a US writer of action movies, so that is what the producers are going for.

An actor called RICK OKON is great in a main role - reminds of me a bit of JONAS NAY from Deutschland 83/86 so will look out for more films he is in.

maybe a bit long and not sure I believe it, especially the more dreamy relationship bits BUT hey, it's great drama - exciting, tense, not ramming home wokeness and diversity quotas like so much preachy UK TV drama.

So 4 stars.

THE GOOD GERMANS? - Das Boot: Series 2 review by TB

German servicemen were intensely patriotic many of them right to the end of the war regardless of party politics. This TV version though entertaining and looking authentic, seems to portray the Kriegsmarine as modern Germans would like to see them. Courageous (certainly) but the mutinies, defeatism, desertions and surrendering en masse simply doesn't ring true, especially for the time period in question - late '42, early '43. The darker side of the German occupation of France is effectively rendered through the eyes of SD commander Forster and the 'enemies of the state' he ruthlessly pursues.

Overall, it's a well crafted production but, like 'Generation War', it takes a slightly 21st century liberalised view of the ordinary men of the armed forces in wartime. They were not victims, they were a dictatorship's foot soldiers.