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Lt Tyler (Matthew McConaughey) takes to the boats with Lt Hirsch (Jake Webber), Mazzola (Erik Palladino) and Tank (David James Power). Studio work on U-571 was done in Rome, while a full-size replica
of a WWII sub was built
in Malta, where the scenes at sea were filmed.
“It wasn’t a case of, Well, Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line are
being made: Let’s join the trend. The
characters were wonderful, the tale was emotionally involving and it contained one
stunning action sequence after another. I couldn’t wait to do it”
Dino De Laurentiis
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THE SKULLS |
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Universal Pictures in
association with Original Film/Newmarket
Capital Group.
Prod: Neal H Moritz, John Pogue; Exec prod: William Tyrer, Chris J Ball, Bruce Mellon; Co-prod: Fred Caruso; Dir: Rob Cohen; Scr: John Pogue; Ph: Shane Hurlbut; Prod des: Bob Ziembicki; Cost des: Marie-Sylvie Deveau; Ed: Peter Amundson; Mus: Randy Edelman.
With Joshua Jackson (Luke McNamara), Paul Walker (Caleb Mandrake), Hill Harper (Will Beckford), Leslie Bibb (Chloe), Craig T Nelson (Litten Mandrake), William Petersen (Ames Levritt), Christopher McDonald (Lombard), Steve Harris (Detective Sparrow).
International
distribution:
Universal Pictures/UIP.
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Rome’s Cinecittà was chosen as the U-571 base partly because of its close proximity to Malta. “We tried to find an original submarine to use, but they don’t exist apart from one exhibited in a Chicago museum,” explains De Laurentiis, “so we had to build it. And the largest tank available for that - and for staging our night scenes - happened to be in Malta. So, rather than shoot interiors in North Carolina which was our first plan, Rome was the obvious choice. The cost of building the sub is the reason why the movie is so expensive.” But there was another reason, too.
“I feel moved making U-571 in Rome,” says De Laurentiis, “because I also made War and Peace here at the same studio in 1954.”
“It has been a technically exhausting film to make,” notes Mostow, “All of us, cast and crew, have been working in claustrophobic sets for weeks on end and using tremendous amounts of energy. When we sold the script to Universal I said, ‘If you liked the end of Breakdown, where Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan were in a pick-up truck being crushed in a metal container, now I’m going to take this group of actors, put them in a submerged sardine can and crush them underwater’! They could see the suspense in that terrifying situation, especially with characters you empathise with and can’t stop watching.”
So, he concludes, “if audiences leave U-571 feeling they’ve been on that submarine, with their hands clammy and their minds both exhausted and excited, I know I’ll have done my job properly!”
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