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When first released in 1981, it was billed as a view of World War 2 "from the other side." There was a question whether it was appropriate to show Nazi sailors as human beings. Effectively, that turned out to make the film all the more poignant.

It shows the young men on the boat, barely out of adolescence, gradually lose their youthful bravado at the beginning of the film and return as grizzled veterans. Early on, the Kaleun compares the mission to a "children's crusade" and tells the guest journalist on board to wait until the boys have time to grow beards before photographing them so as to assuage the shame of sending such young men to sea.

The Cabaret scene in the beginning masterfully portrays the anxiety of the young men who may well be spending their last days ever on land, contrasted with their officers who sense the war is turning, that the "old guard" is being decimated and even that equipment is being sabotaged.

As the mission progresses, the crew becomes an ensemble and we observe the effects of claustrophobia, extensive boredom and moments of sheer terror on this small group of men whom we come to know gradually. Even those who have few spoken lines become developed characters who draw our sympathy.

When they eventually are given the suicidal assignment to pass through Gibraltar, we have a brief moment of (comic) relief as the officers board a merchant ship in Spain for resupply. The merchant captain, full of the propagandistic "Deutsche Helden" narrative as he treats the officers to a Christmas feast illustrated the contrast between the official narrative and reality.

As the boat inevitably is sunken near Gibraltar, the boys and officers heroically work to save each other and against all odds, succeed. The scenes of frantic activity are compelling as the drive for survival creates a sense of admiration for their fortitude and courage.

Once safety is achieved, however, it all comes to naught with swift brutality.

The heroism of war and warriors rings hollow as it only underscores the waste of human life, inevitable in war.

Graham Greene was justly outraged at the virtual rewriting of his original novel for cold war propaganda purposes. The original novel has a much more nuanced theme about involvement vs "objectivity," ideology vs belief as well as the destructive nature of activist ignorance.

In the novel, the main characters have symbolic values; Fowler, the British journalist, is a cynical "old world" person who claims absolute non-involvement in a war that he is reporting objectively claiming to be above ideology. Pyle, the "quiet American" is a young idealist and a product of academic political science faculties and the ideology of an editorial journalistic expert named York Harding ( a dog from Greene regarding what he thought were the worst incidents of American political culture -- the bellicose yokel Sgt York and the ignorant corruption of Warren Harding). They form a love triangle with an Animate Vietnamese beauty, Phuong who seems completely innocent, but according to the novel "owns herself completely".

Fowler's interest in Phuong is almost colonial, in that he wants her for personal comfort since he has a wife back in England. Pyle, with American idealism falls in love with Phuong at first sight and seeks to save her from Vietnam by taking her back to Texas as an American housewife. He doesn't, however, bother until much later to ask her opinion on the matter. Much in the way Americans have intervene ti bring "democracy" to countries they don't bother to understand, whether the locals want it or not.

Pyle and Fowler have several discussions regarding philosophy, theology and politics that would be hard to adequately present in a film. However, this film, a relic of the Cold war turns a thought -provoking novel into America-knows-best jingoism. Pyle knows everything and Fowler, although ostensibly erudite and cultured is a simple Communist dupe. Pyle, as a man of action, is morally impeccable and Fowler, as an intellectual, is a self-centered perfidious coward.

The only redeeming quality of this movie would be to study it in relation to Greene ' s actual novel as an exercise in the nature of cold war propaganda.

American Crime: Impeacment raises some interesting questions. Ultimately, it is supposedly a docudrama about an important moment in American history: the impeachment of a president.

It is uncomfortable to compare this to other films in the genre which cover events like Lincoln's Herculean effort to amend the constitution abolishing slavery before the expiration of his first term, or Kennedy's missile crisis or Watergate, for example.

These were all watershed moments in US history.

This film is about the second time a US President was impeached by Congress, the first being Andrew Johnson owing to a constitutional crisis between the executive and legislative branches. The second impeachment was about the Chief Executive lying under oath to Congress about his sex life.

Looking back from the Trump era, one could hoist the old canard about this being America's "loss of innocence" because of the discovery that presidents have illegitimate sex. Well, no. The JFK presidency was still in living memories. Both Harding and Cleveland had illegitimate children. So it's not that. Perhaps you could say its about the hardening of American political tribalism and the rise of propagandistic journalism in the post-fairness doctrine era at the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle. Effectively, though, it's about the decline of political discourse into celebrity entertainment and cancel culture.

Perhaps purposely or by accident the film takes living people and turns them into flat characters: Clinton, the manipulative narcissist, Monica the starry-eyed bimbo, Linda Tripp the sour and vindictive ugly broad. The only character that seems real is Ann Coulter, who is a cartoon figure to begin with.

That is the problem. The dialogue is wooden. All the characters are self- seeking and none of them are likable (actually, that might be accurate).

If you lived through this in reality, the actors in their make-up remind one of "Spitting Image" marionettes, only without the satiric intent.

In short, the series is just plain boring. It could just as easily be set in a high school populated by horny and self-seeking adolescents.

Then again, given the political culture in the Trumpian era, maybe that's the point.