Das Boot (2019)

A spectacularly ambitious enterprise of unfailing power, rich in all the ways that matter in drama, in writing.

It sustained the pace right from the traumatic opening scene when a U-boat was destroyed, the water filling the submarine and one man choosing to shoot himself rather than await a slow drowning. Grim but gripping.

There have been plenty of films and series that purport to show the grim reality of war, not least Das Boot’s forebears. This series, coy as it may be about its status as a reboot, is an extremely capable addition to the canon.

Unlike the 1981 Das Boot, the TV version only spends about a third of any given episode following the crew of a submarine. And whenever it gets out of the boat, it doesn’t really feel much like Das Boot.

The USP of Das Boot 2.0 is that the underwater drama has to budge up to make room for landlubberly intrigue involving the resistance. On the plus side there’s Vicky Krieps, who was so ineffable in the film Phantom Thread, as Simone Strasser, a wartime translator from Alsace caught on the horns of a dilemma. ... Somehow it’s odd that she should be the best thing in a testosteroney drama about blowing up convoys.

On the evidence of this handsomely produced, surprisingly grisly and solemnly wacko show, though, the main benefit of opening up the story is gaining access to a whole new set of World War II clichés.

From its window-dressing address of Nazis’ “final solution” attitudes toward Jews, to its dutiful recreation of Petersen’s submarine set pieces—in which alarms sound for each incoming attack, the crew goes quiet as it’s stalked by enemy destroyers, and rapidly escalating sonar beeps presage imminent danger—Das Boot is a handsome endeavor that’s never urgent or unique. Or, consequently, necessary.