Gripping and absorbing singular locale set piece that's right up there with its director's best work.

Rating: 8/10 (25 February 2013)

If Lifeboat isn't one of the great, unheard of Hitchcock films that he ever made, then I guess I must just have been more ignorant prior to watching it than I thought. The film is a simple, routine and straight forward drama driven by script and scenario which works better than most dramas do having had a gazillion-and-one things thrown at it. Set in one location for its entire duration, and I read drawing on influence from a stage show of similar ilk, Lifeboat is a never anything less than fascinating film feeding off this really effective sense of isolation and being stranded with different classes; genders and the enemy. It is a survival film, but a film wherein characters must use their wits and minds to work through situations; one wherein writers must use their own respective qualities in this department to further things along whilst running on a minimalist premise. When the on screen drama comes off, and the author is firing on all cylinders in the manner they are here with what they have their characters say; do and how they manipulate fate to up the ante, the results are quite extraordinary pieces of film-making. Lifeboat is one of these instances.
The film covers an array of personnel aboard a lifeboat, the titular lifeboat; a small yet large enough vessel for all half a dozen or so people coming to terms with the fact their ship has been shelled by a German U-boat in the Atlantic and they are now stuck riding the waves of the open sea. We are in the middle of The Second World War and, in a cruel twist of fate, the U-boat itself is struck and sunk resulting in a lone German sailor clambering aboard and into the fray. This of course causes issues given the global situation, but adds an extra dimension to things via the problem with the language barrier.
One might say the presence of these people together like this is representative of how people at the time came to find themselves stuck in a situation of global conflict as a whole. Different folk of British and American ilk, some female and some male; some white and one even African American – all of different classes and backgrounds, are here all together in the same boat (quite literally) at the bereft of a German attack no one saw coming and no one expected would interrupt their pleasant lives as they ploughed on. The presence of a German is intriguing in this sense, if beyond the fact it might act as a petty source for some form of antagonism in the future. Where cries of "propaganda" might arise, it is interesting to observe just how much more bloodthirsty certain American characters are in this film during this time of German induced mass-slaughter in Europe. Here, the German is not a beacon of evil or a mere stock villain; he is just as smart (if not smarter) than anyone else and is depicted as his own entity with a realistic set of goals for the scenario.
The film is beautifully paced and wonderfully directed; taking this premise of a bunch of people trapped in a boat and wrenching out as much heightened tension and such as possible without ever becoming stuck or just feeling like it were plodding along. Concept drams such as these have worked well in the past, films one can pitch in a sentence or a single line; in 1994 film Speed's case, a character is even able to outline three quarters (or the part most people remember) of the plot through a line of dialogue one feels they might say in that situation anyway regarding bombs on buses and the figures behind such a situation. There is less of that sense of spectacle in Lifeboat, but that same sense of energy and drama. The film doesn't have the room for its characters that films such as Cellular did, its inhabitants are stuck where they stand, but if we desire cause and effect to drive the proceedings, the 'cause' must often from within the craft itself while the 'effect' must then go on to have such a thing on everyone in said craft. If there was one film you had to see in addition to the standardised Hitchcock canon, one that didn't get the reputation and word of mouth most in said canon do, make it Lifeboat.