It was the strawberries!!!!!

Rating: 8/10 (27 March 2000)

This one thoroughly deserves its reputation as a classic, but it must be borne in mind that this is fiction. How such a case would have resolved itself in actuality is open to debate. Aside from such quibbling, the story is gripping and builds nicely to the climactic courtroom scene. Good work all around from Fred McMurray (whose memory will unfortunately always be sullied by "My Three Sons"), Jose Ferrer and Van Johnson, and of course Bogart in his quintessential role as Captain Queeg. Robert Francis as Ensign Keith is a tad too earnest, in a Boy Scout sort of way, for my taste, though this is doubtless what they were looking for in the part (I note thru IMDB that his career ended with his untimely death in a plane crash shortly after this movie was made). This really is - to use the overworked term - a classic.