U-571 is a 2000 submarine film directed by Jonathan Mostow from a screenplay he co-wrote with Sam Montgomery and David Ayer. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Harvey Keitel, Bill Paxton, Jon Bon Jovi, Jake Weber and Matthew Settle. The film, telling the story of a World War II German submarine boarded by American submariners to capture her Enigma cipher machine, does not represent any real events. Although the film was financially successful and reasonably well received by critics, and won the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, the plot attracted substantial criticism. British sailors from captured the first naval Enigma machine from in the North Atlantic in May 1941, months before the United States entered the war and three years before the US Navy captured and its Enigma machine. Anger over these inaccuracies reached the House of Commons, where the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, agreed that the film was an "affront" to British sailors. The film was also criticized for portraying German U-boat crews in a negative light by showing them gunning down Allied survivors instead of giving them assistance or taking them aboard as prisoners. Plot During the Battle of the Atlantic, after sinking a merchant ship from an Allied convoy, German U-boat U-571 has her engines badly damaged by depth charges from a British destroyer. U-571's skipper Kapitänleutnant Günther Wassner makes a distress call that is intercepted by American intelligence. The US Navy has its submarine S-33 modified to resemble a German resupply U-boat, to try to steal the Enigma machine coding device and sink the U-571. Before the crew of S-33 receives its assignment, the submarine's executive officer Lieutenant Tyler is unhappy about a recommendation for command of his own submarine being blocked by his commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Dahlgren. During a storm, S-33's boarding party surprises and overwhelms the crew of U-571. After securing U-571, the American S-33 is torpedoed by the arriving German resupply submarine. Dahlgren is blown off the deck and seriously wounded; while struggling in the sea he refuses rescue and orders the boarding party on the captured U-boat immediately to submerge. Tyler takes command of U-571 and dives below the surface, where they subsequently engage and sink the resupply submarine. After making repairs and restoring its power, Tyler decides to route the disabled submarine toward Land's End in Cornwall. However, they are spotted by a German reconnaissance plane, which is unaware that