This is a tight and interesting film, very short but great performances all round, particularly from J Carroll Naish, the two womanising and brawling heroes who obviously love each other really, and many of the minor parts. Interestingly, there are lots of decent performances uncredited.
However, at the risk of being ungenerous, it is worth pointing out that the heroics of Lloyd Nolan and Robert Preston have literally nothing to do with the main action of the picture, the foiling of the eponymous gangster's plot.
The two wireless men are of course extremely brave, both being shot. But their struggle to escape is fruitless. They tip off the nurse, Gail Patrick, about the location of distress flares, but she is intercepted. They try to bluff the gangsters by refusing to send messages, which results in one of their fellow crew being killed. Lloyd Nolan gets an SOS message off using a sparking battery, but no-one believes it. Nolan's character actually achieves nothing at all; Preston at least manages to relay instructions for Nolan's operation via wireless, but it is Gail Patrick who performs the operation.
Finally, it is the engineer's quick thinking that results in the release of all the crewmen, and the captain's retaking of the ship, in a round-up of the action that (a) is extremely cursory, and (b) does not involve our two heroes at all.
So had the two of them been thrown overboard at the beginning of the picture, there would have been no difference in the outcome, except that Nolan, Preston and Patrick would not have settled down into their bizarre threesome at the end!
However, at the risk of being ungenerous, it is worth pointing out that the heroics of Lloyd Nolan and Robert Preston have literally nothing to do with the main action of the picture, the foiling of the eponymous gangster's plot.
The two wireless men are of course extremely brave, both being shot. But their struggle to escape is fruitless. They tip off the nurse, Gail Patrick, about the location of distress flares, but she is intercepted. They try to bluff the gangsters by refusing to send messages, which results in one of their fellow crew being killed. Lloyd Nolan gets an SOS message off using a sparking battery, but no-one believes it. Nolan's character actually achieves nothing at all; Preston at least manages to relay instructions for Nolan's operation via wireless, but it is Gail Patrick who performs the operation.
Finally, it is the engineer's quick thinking that results in the release of all the crewmen, and the captain's retaking of the ship, in a round-up of the action that (a) is extremely cursory, and (b) does not involve our two heroes at all.
So had the two of them been thrown overboard at the beginning of the picture, there would have been no difference in the outcome, except that Nolan, Preston and Patrick would not have settled down into their bizarre threesome at the end!