Action in the North Atlantic (1943)

Best movie ever!

Blistering performances.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Well this is one movie title that's certainly not misleading. There's tons of action in this gripping WW2 movie about the Merchant Marine. I might even go so far as to say it's got the best and most realistic action sequences from any WW2 movie I've seen. I'm talking about movies made during the era not stuff made decades later with a gazillion dollar budget, of course. The story's about an American tanker crew that survives their ship being sunk by a German U-boat and spend eleven days adrift at sea before being rescued. They later return to sea on a Liberty ship leading a convoy. Once again they have to deal with the Nazis. What's not to like? It's a WW2 movie with colorful Warner Bros. character actors Alan Hale, Dane Clark, Peter Whitney, and Sam Levene backing up Humphrey Bogart and Raymond Massey. There's only a couple of (minor) female roles, played well by Julie Bishop and Ruth Gordon. Yeah the plot's pretty basic and the characters may seem clichéd but it's all put together so well that I didn't mind. There's something to be said for using a successful formula. The script is great with lots of funny lines and stirring speeches. Good music, both score and a nice rendition of Night and Day from a dubbed Julie Bishop. The photography is beautiful. The special effects are exceptional. The direction is terrific, especially in those spectacular action scenes. This is all the more remarkable when one considers director Lloyd Bacon didn't get to finish the picture. Bogart is great (as always) and his fans will love this one. Pretty much anyone who enjoys WW2 movies, particularly those from WB, will like this a lot. It's an emotional, exciting two hours of solid entertainment.

During World War II, a Merchant Marine unit keeps getting into skirmishes with German U-boats as it tries to deliver supplies to the Russians. As the title indicates, there is a lot of action in this movie. Better than half of the film is devoted to extended battle scenes. While these are fairly well executed, they do become tedious as there is little dramatic tension. Scenes of civilian life represent a nice respite from the fighting but they are all too brief. In his follow-up to "Casablanca," Bogart isn't given much to do but he is always worth watching. There's a good supporting cast headed by the likes of Massey, Hale, Levene, and Clark.

"Action in the North Atlantic" (1943) directed by Lloyd Bacon is or still is an adventurer hymn of joy to those who traveled and entering the bay, evicting the blockade to the Murmansk port during WWII, which impeached promissory vessels with the food help and also other material coming to Russia, after the victory in Stalingrad ground against German army. It is somewhat oldest as style, with a touch of war propaganda, that annoys its interest now and fabricated behavior as movie, notwithstanding its good spirit as a fiction almost narrated partly as a documentary about if not with some lines between characters on the boat. The scenes of the maritime workers union are powerful, as influenced by social convictions that were considered before as subversives for the bosses, but is there where is discussed the problem of ship wrecking during this kind of trips over the seas. Namely concerning wreckage of vessels, as only attended by any kind of civil cargo in that path and, by consequence, the increasing of the tremendous death toll of crews in the recent past, it is the dramatic jump for another step in the fight against closed influence by the top hierarchical oppression of any structure. Meaning that, however, humble people of sailors are strength enough for changing plans from the previous catastrophe of such an isolationist mind and irresponsibleness of supreme fighters, whom previously not had heard with accuracy the experiment of the survivors. Preparing continually courage for the worst, next in the darkness of the maritime fog inside the cargo, across mining undersea shelling sometimes with such horror people. Or, in a given sequence, when a submarine was waiting for a little bit of noise at surface, inducing that nearby Allies were there for well done, escaping after a war of nerves and sacrifices. The scene with the Russians squadron of airplanes, welcoming the ship's convoy of maritime cargo, it is one of the most ironic and best conceived for the time, as opening the space for the good will of the goods. That survived the successive battles on the trip made almost in closed atmosphere, during the most part of the story of this movie, made too with the anxiety from the condensed way of acting. Why not understanding the limits of the way, that Lloyd Bacon composed with fast understatement such a victory of humanity ? When this movie is considered still now, as a piece of warrior's art since then, with such an enthusiasm from the icy harbor of Murmansk, from the entire population, as common interest from the then spelled Allies of fortune.

This comparatively little-known film should have done for the Merchant Sailors of WWII what "The Cruel Sea" did for the image of the Royal Navy. The men who sailed the convoy ships were treated appallingly by the owners of the vessels they crewed, who indeed where quick to institute "retroactive stoppage of pay" clauses upon receiving word of a ship's being lost. They also were subject to verbal --even physical-- abuse by their own countrymen, who routinely mistook them for "Service Shirkers". "Action" is one of the few films that gives them their due.This film is remarkable on many counts. Not only is the acting rock solid, and the story in itself a fine "sea saga", but the director has managed to avoid many potential pitfalls thrown into in his path by the War (Propaganda?) Department. The obligatory leave-taking scenes are touching, but not maudlin; the even more obligatory "speech-making" is impassioned, but never embarrassingly so. And the Enemy is portrayed as a thoroughly competent if ruthless professional, as dedicated to his own trade as the convoy Sailors are to theirs. (I for one did not find the lack of English "subtitles" a problem --I could pretty well figure out what the U-Boat skipper and his crew were up to.) To repeat my opening comments,-- this film, though not as well-circulated as "The Cruel Sea", certainly should rank as its equal.