User Reviews

The film did get overly sentimental at times and there were some unnecessary plot digressions that served only as filler, but overall, a moving portrayal of actual events.

When the American bomber goes in and bombs a submarine crowded with people on deck and displaying a large red cross, that is an accurate retelling of what actually happened. Similarly, a despicable Nazi U-Boat commander actually did turn out to be a caring man who disobeyed orders and jeopardised his own safety to rescue all those survivors of a boat that he had targeted legitimately. Just as in real life, he was eventually forced to abandon them to their fate because he was attacked by the Americans. Several other U-Boats did also join in the operation.

In reality, around half the survivors eventually died before they eventually reached safety.

THE SINKING OF THE LACONIA 2010

This film was released as a two part mini-series in 2011. The film is about the sinking of the RMS Laconia by a German U-boat during World War Two. The film tells the story from several different points of view. The RMS Laconia was a Cunard passenger liner being used by the Royal Navy as a troopship. On 12 September, 1942, the ship was torpedoed 600 miles off the West African coast by U-156. The ship was carrying 80 civilians, 268 British troops, 160 Polish soldiers and 1800 Italian prisoners of war.

The U-boat, surfaced after the attack and finding women, children and Italian POWS, began rescue operations. U-156 was soon swarming with survivors. The submarine took lifeboats in tow when room ran out on board the U-boat. The U-boat radioed headquarters for help in the rescue.

Several other submarines, including an Italian one joined the rescue. Several Vichy French ships also joined. The rescue mission was interrupted by a bombing run made by an American B-24.

Quite a few of the survivors were transferred to the Vichy ships and landed in Casablanca. (They were soon free after the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942. The British officers were kept on board the U-boasts and landed in France as POW's.

The film follows several of the ships passengers, ship's officers, Italian POW's and the officers and men of the U-boat. The cast includes, Brian Cox, Franka Potente, Ken Duken, Morven Christie, Andrew Buchan, Lindsay Duncan and Thomas Kretschmann.

Franka Potente is a German who has escaped from Germany and was making her way to England. Brian Cox is the Captain of the Laconia, Ken Duken is U-156's Captain, Thomas Kretschmann plays German Admiral, Donitz. Andrew Buchan is one of the Laconia officers in charge of the Italian POWS.

The various characters are shown as the ship sinks and some are rescued. Others end up sailing for the coast of Africa. (which several lifeboats reached) The Germans for once are not shown as blood thirsty madmen.

Well worth a watch if you are looking for something a bit different. The mini-series was a co-production between the BBC and German Television. The director was Uwe Janson and the story was supplied by Alan Bleasdale.

The Laconia was the second Cunard liner of that name. The first was sunk by a U-boat in World War One. This WW2 incident caused German Admiral Donitz to issue the LACONIA DIRECTIVE. This was a general order for U-boats not to stop to pick up survivors.

Alan Bleasdale's drama, The Sinking of the Laconia recounts a controversial maritime incident in the second world war. The event took place some 600 miles from the west coast of Africa in September 1942 some.

According to one British survivor. The German U Boat Commander, Werner Hartenstein sank the Laconia killing over 2000 passengers but then realising that civilians were in the ship including women, children, Italian prisoners of war, he risked his U Boat and the lives of his crew to sit on the surface all the time and rescue the survivors. The U Boat was then attacked by a US bomber despite displaying a red cross flag.

Bleasdale adds some stories to the main narrative. Mortimer (Andrew Buchan), the Laconia's honourable Third Officer dutifully carrying on with his life just moments after learning his wife and children have been killed in a bombing raid. Hilda (Franka Potente) is a widow who lost her baby in the sinking. She sounds English but she is part German, guilty that she did not protest against the rise of Nazism unlike other members of her family.

This is a well shot drama but not entirely enthralling. Bleasdale's reputation is such that you expect top drawer writing from him. Ken Duken stands out as Hartenstein but it is not in the level of Das Boot as a claustrophobic drama.

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.

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.

Nobody talks like this. The characterisation is flat with no clear motivations. Why does the British officer feel so betrayed by the German woman? 'You lied to me' - he's known her for about one day, and she didn't want to give herself away, obviously... The plot plods from one quasi-intellectual soliloquy to another. The whole thing is pretentious playwright preaching which detracts from the sad true incident it is based on.

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.

After a great script, some good performances by the actors and a great job by the director, they have achieved a very good series that catches the viewer from the beginning to the end.

I was very much looking forward to this, as the adverts for it suggested that it could be an excellent little historical drama, the like of which the BBC regularly produce.

I could not have been more wrong.

I'm aware that such productions are always subject to budget constraints, but the CGI-effects were distinctly dodgy - I was very much aware that they were CGI. The clothing worn by the cast was another severe let down. It was often too pristine, in some cases ill-fitting, and occasionally utterly unauthentic for the 1940s. The greatest issue with the production however lay in the script and the acting. The acting was often wooden, and unbelievable. The script was clunky, and too 'modern' in language and attitudes held by the protagonists - the production I saw did not feel like it was portraying the 1940s. The script also suffered for concentrating on too many characters, which resulted in my not being emotionally engaged and actually caring whether they survived the sinking or not (this wasn't helped by very few of them being played as particularly pleasant people). Another particular problem was the number of simply unbelievable events that are shown throughout the film - the 'crossing the equator' scene in the U-Boat suggests a SERIOUS lack of discipline aboard, and the pep-talk by one of the U-Boat officers to the victim of the crew's bullying about being a team-player is very 21st century. The cringe-worthy performance of 'home on the range' or some such western song by the awkward British officer was very odd, and did not feel very 1940s at all - and I did find myself wondering where he got the costume from on a boat in the middle of a war? The portrayal of the Polish troops as nothing but violent thugs was a gross misrepresentation and offensive.

All in all, I was severely disappointed, feeling that the bravery and sacrifice shown on both sides during the real sinking of the SS Laconia was totally ignored for an over-dramatic, literally unbelievable piece of hokum that looked and felt like it was a poorly-written 21st century take on one of the saddest story's of the war.

I will not focus on the qualities of this movie -- just on its unfair anti-American sentiment. It is done in the better tradition of the European cinema. However, I cannot but underrate it for its anti- American sentiments. It shows the Americans trigger-happy backward country bumpkins at the backdrop of the sophisticated moral issues the German skipper of the U-Boat and his British counter parts struggle with. The movie successfully shows the human suffering at war. Yet it seems to me quite preachy at times (the words of the skipper of the Laconia before it sinks, for example.) It is blowing out of proportion the supposedly kind act by the Nazi U-Boat captain. The flat, one- sided portrayal of the Americans came not to show that war can produce stupid mistakes but to juxtapose the Germans and British against the Americans. Let us not forget that this one act of kindness by a German U-boat captain has to be measured against the tons of reckless torpedoing of passenger ships by German submarines during the blockade of the UK in WW2.

It was also unrealistic how the US bomber approached the U-boat dropped five bombs then all of a sudden, without sinking the submarine, the chief pilot said "Mission accomplished" and they flew back (supposedly low on fuel). Not sure how true to the historical fact this is but it is proper to remind the British and German directors that regardless of all the Nazi-British comradery shown in the film the actual goal of the 3rd Reich was to subject all nations to its ideological and military superiority. This does become clear to an extent in the film but the attempt to water down the historical role of the various parties in the war diminishes the film's potential.

The portrayal of the American flyers bombing the sub was over the top. Some Germans like to say 'You had your murderers too' which seems to assuage guilt for them for their ancestors' crimes against humanity. Unless one cannot see the difference between the two sides, let me state it clearly - The Germans had institutionalized murder from the very top to the bottom, with the occasional protesting humanitarian below, their opponents were institutionalized humanitarians with the occasional murderer in the ranks. I'm sorry, but having American flyers laughing after the bombing and saying "Let's go back and strafe them", that ranks in my book as propaganda and if it were more truthful it's probably something a German flyer would have said, since it was part of all their campaigns to strafe civilians fleeing the fighting. They strafed, in order, Polish, Belgians, Parisians, and Russians to clog the roads with panicked civilians, and to force them in a given direction to block advancing armies, much like a sheepdog biting at the heels of animals. It's not possible to enjoy this movie while knowing the facts of how the Germans behaved in WWII. Also not historically accurate is the fact that an odd triangular cross exists in place of the Nazi swastika, and the Kapitaen gives a traditional instead of the 'Heil Hitler' salute while receiving a medal from Doenitz, due to the fact that both are illegal to portray in Germany today. With good reason.

This is a great story ruined by this production. Wooden lines, wooden performances. Let's skip to the sinking where it is clear that the whole the was filmed in a swimming pool. It's supposed to be the middle of the ocean but not a wave in sight. It gets worse: through all the terror and fear of being on a sinking ship there are no raised voices - sll the conversations are just as if the actors were sat in a drawing room. Tension: none! Excitement: none. So disappointing.