Strawberry Shortcake is Less Dangerous

Rating: Null/10 (25 November 2012)

Powerhouse acting makes this sea drama a gripping tale of mutiny aboard ship. The interaction between the chief officers—MacMurray, Johnson, and Bogart is especially compelling, as Queeg (Bogart) descends slowly into madness. The underlying question is whether Queeg would have cracked had his staff officers given him better support. MacMurray (Keefer) gets the unenviable role as the slippery schemer, which he is. But he's also the one who most perceptively spots Queeg's unstable judgment.
This is one of Bogart's signature roles; at the same time, Queeg's obsession with the missing strawberries was widely parodied by comics of the time. Watching him slowly unravel on the witness stand amounts to one of Hollywood's acting high points. Then too, someone in authority had the good sense to keep the sometimes distractive romantic subplot—Keith and Wynn— from interfering with the main story. Too bad the boyish Francis' life was cut so short. Here he performs admirably as the idealistic young shavetail. My only gripe is Ferrer's smugly overweening portrayal of lawyer Greenwald. His pompous diatribe at movie's end is less an indictment of the staff officers than a showboat for an Oscar-winning actor who doesn't appear until the movie's almost over and is making up for it.
All in all, the drama's human element—plus the really well done typhoon—remains compelling despite the years. I guess, that audiences of that day were right in making the movie the box office hit it was.