Very interesting political commentary from Hitchcock, packaged as an adventure flick.

Rating: 8/10 (24 October 2005)

This movie's strength is not so much the execution but rather the great and risky idea. It's the kind of WWII movie that you'd expect to see done 30 years after the fact (when it's safely irrelevant). But Hitch dropped this one on the public right in the middle of the unfinished war.
The show takes a handful of different characters, drops them into a lifeboat after a German sub sinks their ship, and then watches the personalities play out against each other. It's a metaphor for what society as a whole was doing at the time. Through modern eyes, the movie is definitely good but not quite spectacular.
The characters help make the show. In modern movies like this, you'd expect to get totally flat stereotypes for most of the smaller roles. Then the writer would strive to make the 2 or 3 primary characters SO much more interesting than the others, and so the primaries would start feeling a little contrived anyway. But in this case, Hitchcock struck a middle ground of characters that all seem reasonably predictable but still interesting in little ways. It feels realistic.
I hate to point to a solid old character drama and say: "It needed more dazzling special effects" but in this case I think it actually would help some. The whole movie takes place on the lifeboat (soundstaged) and the rickety background projection sometimes gets a little distracting in the tense storm scenes.
It's a good show that could use a good remake. 50 years later this movie is still more thought-provoking than most newer films about the war.