This is a reasonably well-done tale of a submarine commanded by Glenn Ford, with Ernest Borgnine as his friend and executive officer, during World War II.
Ford and Borgnine are called back from the Philippines to Pearl Harbor, leaving Ford's wife and little girl behind. By the time Ford and Borgnine take their boat out, the family has been captured. Ford pursues the big Japanese aircraft carrier, the Shinaru, but it's being deliberately shielded by a transport carrying a thousand captives of the Japanese. The captives include Ford's own family, and he knows it, but he's forced -- against the urgent pleas of Borgnine -- to take a shot at the Shinaru. He misses and sinks the transport instead.
This leaves him understandably bitter. He takes his boat directly into Tokyo Bay and takes another shot at the Shinaru. This time his torpedoes are intercepted purposefully by a Japanese destroyer. After this dangerous venture he is barely able to get his boat back to Pearl Harbor, passing out in a tormented sleep for three days.
A final attempt at the carrier leads him to Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, which Ford considers a dead end. As well he should. This is late 1942. The Battle of Midway was over. The Japanese still held some territory in the Aleutians but it was practically uncontested. Nobody wanted the Aleutians. There's nothing there but sea lions and bird, and the weather is lousy. There were some bloody encounters in the fog and snow but in the end the Japanese withdrew, perhaps out of boredom.
The unlikely prospect of finding a big Japanese carrier there aside, this is pretty well done. It's unsparing in some ways. There are a few flashbacks to the happy times that Ford, his family, and Borgnine spent together, but in the end the wife and little blond girl die. A more traditional ending would have reunited them somehow.
The visual effects are effective too. And there is a good deal of tension in the scene in Tokyo Harbor, when Ford is negotiating a mine field. After the final attack on the Shinaru, the submarine is sunk. The majority of the crew escape using aqua lungs and are rescued by a companion boat, but six men are left behind to die. When he's pulled aboard the rescue boat, one of the first things Ford asks is the names of the men who didn't make it -- an admirable touch.
Borgnine is a little more humanistic than the skipper. This is a traditional conflict: the sympathetic second-in-command and the stern and by-the-book skipper. At that, Glenn Ford is not just tough, he's almost miraculously indifferent to pain. When they are depth-charged, Ford falls and breaks the bone in his upper arm. The pharmacist's mate puts a small splint over the fracture and Ford carries on -- giving orders, donning his escape gear, floating to the surface -- as if nothing were wrong. I remember meeting a stranger as he emerged, loaded, from a bar and managed to fall down while trying to get into his car. "I think I broke my fibia," he said thickly. And indeed I could feel the grinding of a fractured bone in his shin. By the time the ambulance arrived, it could no longer be said that he was feeling no pain.
As a submarine movie, this is no masterpiece but it's above average. Ford is in his minimalist mode, not animated by hatred as in "The Big Heat," but the interpretation is believable enough. There are times when Borgnine seems to be reading his lines from cue cards but he's such a jolly, good-natured guy that it's difficult not to like him. And this is one of the few instances from this period when the inclusion of the hero's romantic interest is justified. Without the corny scenes of his wife an family, we wouldn't be able to understand Ford's character.
Ford and Borgnine are called back from the Philippines to Pearl Harbor, leaving Ford's wife and little girl behind. By the time Ford and Borgnine take their boat out, the family has been captured. Ford pursues the big Japanese aircraft carrier, the Shinaru, but it's being deliberately shielded by a transport carrying a thousand captives of the Japanese. The captives include Ford's own family, and he knows it, but he's forced -- against the urgent pleas of Borgnine -- to take a shot at the Shinaru. He misses and sinks the transport instead.
This leaves him understandably bitter. He takes his boat directly into Tokyo Bay and takes another shot at the Shinaru. This time his torpedoes are intercepted purposefully by a Japanese destroyer. After this dangerous venture he is barely able to get his boat back to Pearl Harbor, passing out in a tormented sleep for three days.
A final attempt at the carrier leads him to Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, which Ford considers a dead end. As well he should. This is late 1942. The Battle of Midway was over. The Japanese still held some territory in the Aleutians but it was practically uncontested. Nobody wanted the Aleutians. There's nothing there but sea lions and bird, and the weather is lousy. There were some bloody encounters in the fog and snow but in the end the Japanese withdrew, perhaps out of boredom.
The unlikely prospect of finding a big Japanese carrier there aside, this is pretty well done. It's unsparing in some ways. There are a few flashbacks to the happy times that Ford, his family, and Borgnine spent together, but in the end the wife and little blond girl die. A more traditional ending would have reunited them somehow.
The visual effects are effective too. And there is a good deal of tension in the scene in Tokyo Harbor, when Ford is negotiating a mine field. After the final attack on the Shinaru, the submarine is sunk. The majority of the crew escape using aqua lungs and are rescued by a companion boat, but six men are left behind to die. When he's pulled aboard the rescue boat, one of the first things Ford asks is the names of the men who didn't make it -- an admirable touch.
Borgnine is a little more humanistic than the skipper. This is a traditional conflict: the sympathetic second-in-command and the stern and by-the-book skipper. At that, Glenn Ford is not just tough, he's almost miraculously indifferent to pain. When they are depth-charged, Ford falls and breaks the bone in his upper arm. The pharmacist's mate puts a small splint over the fracture and Ford carries on -- giving orders, donning his escape gear, floating to the surface -- as if nothing were wrong. I remember meeting a stranger as he emerged, loaded, from a bar and managed to fall down while trying to get into his car. "I think I broke my fibia," he said thickly. And indeed I could feel the grinding of a fractured bone in his shin. By the time the ambulance arrived, it could no longer be said that he was feeling no pain.
As a submarine movie, this is no masterpiece but it's above average. Ford is in his minimalist mode, not animated by hatred as in "The Big Heat," but the interpretation is believable enough. There are times when Borgnine seems to be reading his lines from cue cards but he's such a jolly, good-natured guy that it's difficult not to like him. And this is one of the few instances from this period when the inclusion of the hero's romantic interest is justified. Without the corny scenes of his wife an family, we wouldn't be able to understand Ford's character.