MovieChat Forums > In Enemy Hands (2005) Discussion > my review

my review

posted 17 years ago by ctyler_lives
11 replies | jump to latest

First of all id like to say i enjoyed this movie as a whole. The story held an interesting concept, but was sadly very unrealistic, Germans wouldn't have picked up the drowning American's simply to feel as though they had "power". In real life it wouldn't have been practical to bring all those men on board in such a small space.

This was one of the first WW2 films where the Germans actually spoke German, this added so much more to the movie for me, I'm tired of seeing American or British actors doing there best to speak in a German accent (eg: Robert Vaughn in The Bridge at Remagen). I feel the Germans were played excellently, some of the Americans irritated me greatly with there loud "WA HOOS!" and "DAMN *beep* An honourable mention to William H Macy, he played and suited his role tremendously. The American Captain was very much the opposite however, I almost shouted with joy when his character died and was cut from the film. His acting was wooden and he was at least 15 years to young to be a Captain.

I feel that Til Schweiger made the best performance in the film, if he hadn't have been in it, my opinion of the film would've been substantially lower. He is a very good actor and was sorely missed when he died. His second in command Ludwig (Thomas Kretschmann) was also a great performance.

The raunchy lovey dovey scenes between Lauren Holly and Macy were the definite downfall of this film. I've never seen worse romance scenes, the acting in them was decent enough but there was absolutely NO chemistry between the actors, the actors as a couple also visually really didn't match.

If you have taken the time to read this far thank you. Why not post any points I may have missed or your opinions on what I have said. :D

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ctyler_lives 17 years ago

Thanks alot for your feed back. :)

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] microbit 17 years ago

Overall a great review.
One thing I absolutely agree on is the acting - or lack thereof - of Scott Caan
as the Swordfish Catptain. How did he get that role ? He's dwarfed by William H. Macy's performance (which doesn't surprise at all of course).
I myself too was glad his character died.
Perhaps he should stick to minor characters like the mil scumbag in "Enemy Of The State", that's about all his acting is capable of IMO.
I disagree about the chemistry between Lauren Holly and William Macy though.
Although it's a shortlived moment, the end where the couple meet the German Officer in the POW camp makes up plenty though. Her pause followed by "thank you" at the POW camp fence is quite powerful.
My girlfriend does not like war movies at all, but when I urged her to see this movie she watched it 3 times in a row and absolutely loved it.

--

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] CaptSquid 16 years ago

How quickly you forget Das Boot.

This film doesn't hold a candle to any other WWII submarine flicks, with the sole exception of U-571. These two films should both be melted down and fogotten.

I'd give it a 0 for accuracy and a 2 for acting.

[–] microbit 15 years ago

Wow, I never made any comparison to other WWI flicks. And of course, no movie will EVER top Das Boot, no contest. I just bought The Director's Cut on DVD last week (I got it brand new for peanuts, that made my day :-). Was hard to get before, retail that is.
PS : I just wish for once I would hear someone pronounce 'Jurchen Prohnov' properly (sorry I can't type the umlaut). Ie. 'nov' being pronounced "noff" instead of the irritating "now" :-)

But anywho,, I don't think that In Enemy Hands professed or tried to be a WWII movie. Seemed more like a "people" movie to me. I liked it a lot, but it didn't need to be set on a sub per se, if you know what I mean.

[–] outthesnow 15 years ago

@microbit:
"PS : I just wish for once I would hear someone pronounce 'Jurchen Prohnov' properly (sorry I can't type the umlaut). Ie. 'nov' being pronounced "noff" instead of the irritating "now" :-)"

Well, for one thing, it would help if his name were spelled correctly. It's
"Jürgen Prochnow".

Also, here are some umlauts you can borrow. Copy, paste, and save.
ä ë ö ü

This computer is en-US localized (english-US), and no problem with umlauts. If you are using Windows, click Start > Run and type charmap (enter). You can also probably get there through your Programs\Accessories etc. menus, depending on which version. The Character Map has characters for many languages, including those above. Find the one you want, click on it, click Select > Copy, then paste it into your message or whatever.

Have a great day!

Never believe anything that comes out of Hollywood.

[–] microbit 15 years ago

Hi outthesnow,

Sorry about misspelling his surname, I haven't used Dutch/German in a long time (I'm Belgian but been in Australia for 20 years now), I think I spelled it the way it sounds :-(
I guess criticising pronunciation conversely calls for correct spelling on my behalf :-)

As luck has it, I just booted up in Ubuntu (linux, on a separate HDD), I normally boot from XP and then run Ubuntu from Xming with colinux.

I'll reboot soon, and then I'll give the charmap a go.

I do have EN-US, EN-AUS, FR and a few others in my language toolbar in XP.
My reason though for both locales in EN is Office (Outlook) treating some classic English spelling as erroneous when set US and vice-versa. (eg. realise vs. realize)

I'll give a little confirmation when I try it, since that seems courteous.

Thanks for the tip ! I really appreciate it. I've wondered for some time how to readily access it.
(also btw the Outlook/Office tools don't work when typing in IMDb's Body text - they do however in Firefox, which I am using now).

Thanks again.

-- Kris

[–] outthesnow 15 years ago

Hi Kris,

Yes, it's long been recognized that en-BR or (-UK) and en-US are two different dictionaries, for word processors or browsers (Firefox's built-in spell checker), as well as en-AUS.

As George Bernard Shaw said many years ago,

"England and America are two countries divided by a common language." LOL!

I'm not clear on why you would be using MS Office here, unless you're composing your messages there and pasting into IMDb box. I suppose for reviews or long posts, it's a good idea. I use Open Office, which is *free*, and provides the same functions as MS Office. I have no trouble copy/pasting from Open Office to this message box, or vice versa. Or from Character Map to here. But I use Firefox, as you said. Haven't used IE in ages, but if it can't copy from MS Office into here, that seems pretty poor. Wordpad will also copy/paste either way with no trouble.

Belgium to Australia -- wow, changing two hemispheres at once! (W-E and N-S) Must have been an interesting adaptation, geographically, climatologically, and especially, culturally :-)

Glad the tip was useful. It's one of the million little things that you don't know unless someone tells you, or you read it somewhere, or just stumble on it and get lucky. I've acquired quite a number of those over the years of playing with Win. Anything else you're looking for? Care to make a shortcut to Charmap on your desktop or in your Start menu (I'm Windows only, unfortunately.)

Cheers,
outthesnow

Never believe anything that comes out of Hollywood.

[–] von-Stettin 12 years ago

It is sad that American productions do not use "real" germans in their war movies.My german is as good as my english,everytime I watch a WWII film I can't help noticing a guy speaking german with an american accent.I know there are a lot of americans of german descent who still speak some kind of german,but it's not good enough...that has always been a putoff watching specially old war movies.I thought they'd do this on purpose,"schnell,schnell","zu Befehl","Jawohl",etc.to make the germans look ridiculous.
I've come to the conclusion that they probably don't care.Hardly any American speaks a second language anyhow..so why bother?So much for authenticity.By the way there are some excellent young german actors,speaking pretty good english the industry could use for these parts...