I am a sucker for a submarine movie. Whether it’s the great (Das Boot), the good (The Enemy Below; Crimson Tide) or the flawed (K-19: The Widowmaker and Black Sea come to mind), I’m usually a sitting duck.

The new Italian sub drama Comandante should have me in the crosshairs, then. And it might have, were it not such a genre outlier – and one with a perceptible, somewhat uncomfortable agenda.

A slick, big budget piece directed by Edoardo De Angelis, Comandante tells a based-on-truth story, that of submarine commander Salvatore Todaro (played here by a ruggedly soulful Pierfrancesco Favino) and his mission to break out of the Mediterranean and head into the Atlantic to pick off merchantmen supplying Britain’s war effort.

Pierfrancesco Favino in Comandante. Image supplied

Todaro is the Italian version of Jürgen Prochnow’s sub commander in Das Boot: a warrior first, a father to his crew, second, and a deep thinker when he has a chance. A fighter for the Fascist cause? Not so much. De Angelis devotes the early part of the film to the equipping of Todaro (who wears a thoracic brace to keep him upright) with...