As my wife is the great grand daughter of Adml. Momsen this movie teaches the historical fact as to the type of person he was. I will get a copy of it. The acting was great as they showed all the emotion involved in a tragic event in the US Navy history.

Submarine down ... men trapped .. dramatic rescue ... very promising elements .. but fails to deliver. The best ingredients are a waste on a poor chef, and that is what happened here. A pretty marketable story, by a good author, but too many corners cut in this made for TV snoozer. The story line was poorly paced to build any tension, the young lovers subplot was underdeveloped and all of the acting was generally weak. If you need to kill some time - fine; if you are a real naval fanatic - fine; but if there are other choices, they will probably be better.

I'm rating this one a 6--spoilers ahoy. I live just half an hour from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, so I've been enamoured of the story of the Squalus since I was in seventh grade. Naturally, I was very excited to hear about this movie. Then I saw it and couldn't help laughing.First of all, it is definitely not filmed on location. I've been inside the shipyard with my dad, and it looks nothing like the yard shown in the movie. But I'll be lenient on that one because the producers would be hard pressed to gain access to an active military facility. However, I will not be lenient on the unimaginable volumes of material ripped off from "U-571"! Models, sets, scenes, and musical strains, all siphoned out of "U-571" like nobody's business. If the Squalus looked that much like a U-boat, it's no wonder it sank! (Not to mention the constant mispronunciation of "Squalus" throughout the movie...)But then there's the story. It's a true story, and the movie does it great justice. There's a Squalus survivor who still lives in these parts, and I had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet him on one of my visits to the shipyard. He burned his account of the sinking into my brain, and as I watched the movie, it was as true to his story as could be. Having heard the story, I knew how it would end, but somehow, the producers still managed to make it a nail-biter! The scene in which the last group of survivors is brought to the surface was excellently done. Pure chance that Sam Neill, as good an actor as he is, bears such a fine resemblance to Swede Momsen. Story-wise, it's a great movie; that's why I'm giving it a 6. But be prepared to get a few chuckles out of it if you live in Portsmouth or have seen "U-571" before; that's why I'm deducting 4.Oh, and guys? Next time we make a submarine flick, can we remember to shut down the diesel engines BEFORE we close the main induction?

I'm a military buff and an ex-Navy man, so I'm drawn to this type of movie whether its good or a stinker. Dramatically, I thought this movie worked quite well. There's action, but the viewer isn't hit over the head with it (pun intended). There are elements of the movie that appeal to men (fishing for a submarine with a grapling hook) and elements that appeal to women (the admiral's poor daughter lost her fiance).I'm not intimately familiar with the real story of the Squalus rescue that this movie is based on, so I may be wrong about this, but I suspect liberties were taken with certain facts in the name of dramatic license. For example, the diving bell almost didn't make it back to the surface on the last of four trips. Swede Momsen, our protagonist, jumps into the water to tie a line on the contraption then proceeds to exhort the crew to "heave!" the bell to the surface by pulling on the rope. I have a hard time believing that really happened.The filmmakers did pretty well with the military courtesy, but I wonder if Momsen really got away with calling the admiral by his first name with enlisted men within earshot. There's also a scene where someone salutes the admiral indoors. (The Navy only salutes outdoors.)And lastly, the multiculturalists evidently had something to say about the casting of this movie because there is a black crewman on the submarine and one or two black crewmen in the crowd on the surface. I guess I can't blame the movie makers for doing this because the alternative is to be criticized by black activists, but that's not the way the Navy was in 1939.All in all, though, a good movie. I gave it a seven.