This mutiny has not aged well

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2012)

Having not seen this film or having read the novel, I approached it with no preconceived notions other that so many on IMDb have given the film so many accolades. Alas, I will not be joining that group. Watching this film in early 2012 I was confronted with a depiction that was overtly jingoistic and so fawning towards the US Navy, that I found the preening gestures to be detracting, robbing the story of any possible objectivity in the story telling. While I am not unaware that every film will mirror the times in which it is crafted, I found the musical score to be mediocre and too strenuously fixated with reproducing a gallant and martial atmosphere. Subtlety this film had none. Some critics have noted and I will agree with them that the first half of the film really drags. I also feel that the romantic peregrinations of Ensign Willie Keith are unnecessary, weakly depicted and developed. Watching it now made me cringe, with the watered down tension of his divided loyalties towards his mother and the woman he asserts he is in love with just comes across as unconvincing, drained of real passion, conviction and angst. It doesn't help the movie that the two actors playing the roles had practically no sparks between them. That entire part of the film, even if it is in the book, could have been left out.
My impression of Bogart as the mentally unhinged Captain was that he was miscast for this role. Bogey, for me at least, was too wooden, stiff, an obvious land lubber trying to make himself look like a seasoned sea dog and I didn't buy it for a moment. I kept on waiting for him to pop a cigarette in his mouth but not once is he seen smoking, which, as hilarious as it might sound from a health point of view, was his trade mark in so many of his films. Another thing I was quite surprised at was how short he was. Every time he stood beside Van Johnson or Fred MacMurray, both quite tall men, Bogey look so much smaller, which of course he was.
Much has been made of his recourse to fidgeting with with balls of some metal, and even if it is in the novel, the way he acts this out looks contrived and with no subtly. Imagine if it was Charles Laughton portraying this captain as he had on the film "Mutiny on the Bounty"? Bogart's Captain is portrayed more as someone who is severely anal retentive, given to ridiculous attention to details that have about as much place on a minesweeper as they would on a chain gang. That type of spit and polish with harsh consequences for insubordination belonged on a big battle ship, not a rusting hulk.
I found the emotional projections of every single person in the film to be too cautious, unnatural, forced, self conscious of being an "act". Fred MacMurray, a talented actor, hardly breaks away from his monochromatic portrayal, and strangely so. The only person in the film who evoked a few moments of real emotion was Jose Ferrer, whose sneering revulsion for the defendants is a welcome jolt of a real moment of conviction.
A word about special effects and stock footage. The film used three sources to show the boats. One was shot either on a stage or on a real boat, another was stock footage from WW2 and the weakest was the model ship being shot in a large tub. The model scenes looked at today will only make you laugh. I suppose that in 1954 people didn't much care if the ship looked like a toy; they focused on the overall story. I am someone grown accustomed to quality effects and looked at now, the storm tossed boat looks silly and amateurish.
The premise of the drama is not impossible to conjure but I felt that it lacked enough life and death held in the balance to convince me. Bogart's reaction to seeing the mutinous defendants outside the court room was typical of how odd the relationships were. He was not the least bit perturbed by seeing them and he greeted them as friends. The court room drama was the strongest part of the film and I will grant that watching Bogart's character fall apart was the climax of the film. However, it was a short moment in what is otherwise a rather dreary and muted film. You would think that the actions taken in the middle of a typhoon to save everyone on board from imminent drowning would have evoked a stronger reaction from all concerned but you won't find it here. I was bothered that the film does not tell you what became of Bogart's character, Captain Queeg. All that we know is that the defendants won their case and that Queeg lost. I found the lack of follow through to be a weak point. All in all, the film looks very dated, the actors all look devoid of conviction and by comparisons to other boat films, this one is flat. Not impressed. Go and look at what Laughton and Gable did on the other Mutiny film and then you'll see action worth writing accolades for. Not here.