10 War Films That Broke All The Rules

Poseiden remake-r Wolfgang Petersen won the attention of Hollywood with Das Boot, his 1981 war film following the tragic fate of the German submarine U-96's doomed crew.

Alongside The Perfect Storm, it's another piece of compelling evidence for the theory that Petersen got into filmmaking in order to make audiences care about small crews only to tragically kill them off.

And it's this empathy which made the film so radical, as Das Boot was one of the earliest and remains one of the most successful cinematic attempts at humanizing the everyday individuals who made up the Nazi forces. It's uncomfortable territory, but the film's lengthy runtime and initially languid pace gives viewers sufficient time to grow attached to the inhabitants of the U-boat.

When the eventual, inevitable tragedy strikes, it's striking just how much sympathy Petersen can engender in historical villains, and the film's subtle character building serves to ground the reality that for a great many participants, war is less of a calling and more simply an unavoidable fact of life.