Morituri (1965)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Pretty Good

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Unbelievably good direction of camera crew. Fantastic helicopter shots with NO CGI! Inside the ship, closeups turning into wide shots back to closeups of other people. Brando is very good but watch Brynner talking about his cigar - what a master. Wally Cox should have been nominated for an Oscar. especially if you have seen his later films and TV shows. But it is the direction (Bernard Wicki) of the camera work that is the reason all movie buffs should watch this twice. Amazing work.

A war pacifist (Marlon Brando) is blackmailed to pose as an SS officer and to disable the scuttling explosives on freighter carrying rubber cargo to be captured by the Allies.The film did not do well on its original release, probably at least in part because few people understood its title. The movie is also one of unrelieved gloom, which may have been a factor. The film was a financial disaster. In an attempt to be more commercial, the film was reissued as "Saboteur: Code Name Morituri". Even knowing what the word means and seeing the film, I still find it strange.Marlon Brando is pretty great here. I don't know if he is generally recognized as a great actor. I suppose he is, but you don't often hear him listed among the greats. But if I didn't know who he was, I would have believed he was, in fact, a German actor. The accent is really good. (Germans may disagree, but to these American ears it was spot on.)

This is a remake from a German film, it was made seventeen years prior to this movie, and it was the first German film made after the war which was about the Second World War. This enjoyable WWII film has a brilliant script , original, precise, forceful , with intensity difficult to perceive . The title "Morituri" is Latin which can be translated as "we who are about to die", from the traditional salute of Roman gladiators in the arena, "Morituri Te Salutamus" , We, who are about to die, salute you! . World War II, espionage, adventure and human lives have never before been combined so explosively . It deals with a German called Rober Crain (Marlon Brando) living in India during World War II is blackmailed by the English (Trevor Howard along with Brando appeared in Mutiny on the Bounty in 1962 and were to appear again years later in Superman) to impersonate an SS officer , he aboard a freighter captained by Mueller (Yul Brynner) with a dangerous assignment . His mission is to locate and disarm the scuttling charges in order to prevent Mueller from scuttling the gunboat and its cargo upon interception by the British fleet . As the allied spy attempts to persuade German boat captain to surrender his vessel . It's not the ordinary World War II spy movie , has an interesting as well as gripping screenplay without mannerisms , though is sometimes slow-moving and overlong . The improvisations throughout history , traps the writer to throw , the short dialogues and surprises rise the action . Sensational interpretations , where all the characters are equally evil in their intentions . Brando plays a Nazi soldier in this film as he had done so in the earlier ¨The young lions¨(1958) for 20th Century Fox, both movies being filmed in black-and-white and both being for made for the same studio. Yul Brynner -is no surprise- magnificent , the film's marketing boasted the surname alliteration of Brando and Brynner . A very support cast such as gorgeous Janet Margolin as Jewish Esther , Trevor Howard as Colonel Statter , Martin Benrath as Kruse , Hans Christian Blech as Donkeyman and William Redfield as Baldwin and Wally Cox as Dr. Ambach Atmospheric cinematography in black and white by Conrad Hall ("Road to Perdition" 2002, "In Cold Blood" 1967,) . Evocative as well thrilling musical score by the great Jerry Goldsmith (Planet of apes , Patton) , full of nuances and details make a lovely movie. The motion picture was professionally directed by Berhard Wicki . He was a notorious stage actor , producer , filmmaker and secondary player . Wicki, who was clown before he became a soldier, stole food for and entertained his French prisoners while they waited to find out if they would be executed. He imprisoned for ten months at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp because of his earlier affiliation with the communist party. Started directing films from 1958 . Best known for his anti-war film ¨The Bridge¨ (1959) and subsequently ¨ Morituri¨. This movie bombed at the box-office upon initial release , it is believe that the film's title was not understood by the public . As such, when re-released, the film was re-named "Saboteur: Code Name Morituri"

This movie started out well enough, the sets and costumes and even the acting was all fine, but it just ran out of story.Brando as the pacifist, German ex-pat, living out the war in pampered isolation in India was believable enough. And him being blackmailed into taking on a top secret mission to save a valuable shipment of rubber to help end the war was plausible, if a tad mundane.But after Brando's on the ship and his mission of disarming the scuttling charges has been mostly accomplished, what else is there to do? Well, here they insert some Nazis officers and a troupe of American prisoners to stretch out the storyline. And it mostly works, except for the maudlin, overwrought character of "Esther" who brings in a note of melodrama formerly unseen in the flick. That performance pretty much spoils the picture and then the movie just sort of slowly grinds to a halt and the credits roll up.So, it's mostly a passable show up until Esther enters and muddles things up and then the story just runs out of gas. One wonders if maybe the writers just got tired and went home early?