

“When John’s character says, ‘Nothing they told me was true and there’s nothing left worth fighting for,’ I think his words will resonate for many people,” Petersen told The Los Angeles Times. Petersen considered the political thriller - which cast the heroic Eastwood as the tired but devoted defender of a less honorable president - an indictment of Washington. I needed time to get a feeling for this work - it’s not Germany anymore.” “Then I came into the stormy international scene. Up to ‘NeverEnding Story,’ my career was one success after another,” Petersen told The Associated Press in 1993. You look at other directors they don’t have the big successes all the time. “In the Line of Fire” was a major hit, grossing $177 million worldwide and landing three Oscar nominations. Eastwood met with Petersen, checked out his work and gave him the job. Seeking a director for the film, Eastwood thought of Petersen, with whom he had chatted a few years earlier at a dinner party given by Arnold Schwarzenegger. In it, Petersen marshalled his substantial skill in building suspense for a more open-air but just as taut thriller that careened across rooftops and past Washington D.C. “Das Boot” launched Petersen as a filmmaker in Hollywood, where he became one of the top makers of cataclysmic action adventures in films spanning war (2004’s “Troy,” with Brad Pitt), pandemic (the 1995 ebolavirus-inspired “Outbreak”) and other ocean-set disasters (2000’s “The Perfect Storm” and 2006’s “Poseidon,” a remake of “The Poseidon Adventure,” about the capsizing of an ocean liner).īut Petersen’s first foray in American moviemaking was child fantasy: the enchanting 1984 film “The NeverEnding Story.” Adapted from Michael Ende’s novel, “The NeverEnding Story” was about a magical book that transports its young reader into the world of Fantasia, where a dark force known as the Nothing rampages.Īrguably Petersen’s finest Hollywood film came almost a decade later in 1993’s “In the Line of Fire,” starring Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent protecting the president of the United States from John Malkovich’s assassin. We all lived for American movies, and by the time I was 11 I’d decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.” “We kids were looking for more glamorous dreams than rebuilding a destroyed country though, so we were really ready for it when American pop culture came to Germany. Though the film was originally released on videocassette as the subtitled DAS BOOT, most copies now available are dubbed into English.“In school they never talked about the time of Hitler - they just blocked it out of their minds and concentrated on rebuilding Germany,” Petersen told The Los Angeles Times in 1993. A technical marvel, THE BOAT is a breathtakingĪnd powerful portrait of war and death. Racing through the sub, squeezing through tiny openings, director Wolfgang Petersen's camera brilliantly evokes the claustrophobia and clamor of undersea battle. The chief attraction of this film, however, is the incredible camerawork. Decidedly anti-Nazi in tone, THE BOAT presents the crew as individual warriors upholding their own brand of honor and sneering at The footage concentrates on the intense, noble captain, Jurgen Prochnow, the only fully developed "character" in the film is the boat, as it undergoes numerous attacks.
#Das boot tv review movie#
Gripping and authentic based on the experiences of photographer Lothar-Guenther Buchheim, this superbly filmed action movie chronicles a U-boat voyage in 1941, detailing above- and below-the-surface horrors as well as the mundane hours that characterize time spent at sea.
