here can’t have been that many submarine movies, but somehow all the trademark scenes seem so familiar. The sub has to dive really, really deep to avoid a whole lot of depth charges, as the sonar pings incessantly and sweaty men stare upward waiting for the blast that will send them all to their watery doom.

U-571 has many such sequences. Its plot is implausible and its characters ridiculous, but there is still considerable pleasure in watching the machines of war depicted here. And it’s very difficult to screw up a depth-charge scene: The barrels drop off a destroyer, an anxious submariner wearing a headset says "I hear splashes" in the same tone that the kid said "I see dead people" in The Sixth Sense, the charges float through the eerie gloom, then — bam! — explosives and sparks and leaks and the sub shakes the way the Starship Enterprise did at least once every episode. Submariners had one of the highest casualty rates of any service in WWII.

For a real idea of what it was like, check out John McCain’s Faith of My Fathers — the best thing about his campaign — in which he writes vividly about his dad’s service in a sub. For an unreal — but fun time all the same — idea, check out U-571.