Greyhound is set during the Battle of the Atlantic, specifically in February 1942. The "First Happy Time", the initial phase of great success for the German U-Boats, is long over. The Brits have adopted the convoy system to better protect the freighters and troop ships supplying their besieged island. They have been honing their ASW skills, to which the subs are trying to adapt by using the "Wolf Pack" tactic. Commander Ernest Krause (Hanks) has received his first command, the fictional Fletcher-class destroyer USS Keeling, call sign Greyhound. After a few months of work-ups, the time has come to sail his new ship into harm's way for the first time, commanding the escorts of the fictional convoy HX-25 to Liverpool.
There is danger and suspense, well-paced action and tasteful special effects, mostly CGI of course. The film delivers on all the expected sweeping CGI footage of period ships and some aircraft on the high seas, specifically, a British Tribal-class DD, a Polish Gromm-class DD and even a Canadian Flower-class corvette, besides Krause's Fletcher and a selection of period freighters, tankers, Liberty ships and converted passenger steamers. Acting, direction and plot are mostly as solid as you would expect of a Hanks vehicle. I especially liked Stephen Graham portrayal of Krause's No. 1 Charlie Cole, a dead-eyed killer. Using Elizabeth Shue, the token actress in an otherwise all-male cast, for a single short, trope-heavy scene and a couple flashbacks feels like a needless waste of some world-class talent. The only real grievance as far as the acting is the over-the-top Englishness of the British voices which is typical of many American movies. Pip pip! Huzzah, old chum. But hey.
Large parts of the writing also feel very solid, although seeing as Hanks gets a screenwriting credit, he could have gone a bit easier on the praying and the Jesus for my taste.
So why do I hate this movie's guts?
Well, for one, the definitive movie about this sujet has long been made. It is an anti-war film called "The Cruel Sea". Look it up. Watch it. It may be black and white and not have CGI and many ships are all wrong, and yet it is head and shoulders above this trillion dollar effort here. Much like "Play Dirty" is above so many infantry movies.
But I digress. My second reason is the completely ahistorical portrayal of the mindset of the German U-Boot-Waffe as monstrous, gloating war criminals, in a manner fully consistent with the American state propaganda of the period, which successfully painted these men as despiccable pirates.
One of the German U-boat commanders keeps taunting Greyhound over the radio, in the clear.
Breaking radio silence, several times, on a convoy, was all but inconceivable for German sub commanders back then, if for no other reason than that it would have allowed the convoy escorts to triangulate their positions. Even outside of actual attacks, many of them defied Dönitz' personal demands for updates in order to avoid detection. One single memorable instance comes to mind: The Laconia incident. Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein radioed his position in the clear when he found out there had been thousands of POWs on a ship he had just sunk. He took rafts of them in tow under red cross flags and was bombed by the Allies for his trouble. Look it up.
None of them, not even the most loyal Nazis, would have resorted to this kind of dumb, childish bullying.
I have a hard time coming up with an explanation of why they chose to ruin a perfectly adequate movie this way, seeing as it is bound to tick off historical-minded viewers no end. My best guess is they must have felt they needed to create some actual villains, not mere antagonists.
Because they went to great lengths to avoid depicting the concept of war itself as the villain. The subdued CGI explosions and burning, sinking ships are too tastefully done to get the point across. Carnage is avoided and the PG-13 rating successfully retained. This is no anti-war movie by any stretch; this is good ole' Hollywood war GLORIFICATION.
My own uncle served on U-997. Luckily, he survived the war, unlike almost all his fellow German submariners. The U-Boot-Waffe "won itself to death", with a full three quarters of its sailors lost. Most of them were very young. Like almost all soldiers, they felt their country was threatened and they had to do their part. Many found the killing of merchant mariners highly distasteful. They were not monsters. There is no place for monsters aboard submarines of any nation.
You should think we'd be past such notions, 39 years after "Das Boot". You should think that, but apparently you would be wrong.
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