This clunky film was made for-cheap by a newcomer into the feature film business. The dialogue is wooden and the conflict/resolution for our main character can be seen from many leagues away. James Caan is a Sub captain that just made a disastrous decision that sunk the ship and killed 50 crewmembers. Great emphasis is placed on his crewmates that now hold a very large grudge thank you very much against this Canadian commander. When Caan is not demoted, instead given command of another submarine along with a secret mission, his former crewmates become even more bitter, having been assigned to his command again. Yes again. Then even worse, Commander Caan pushes one of the men too far to the point that he nearly dies. Grrrrrr! That makes those bitter men even more bitter!
Somewhere in this story the lessons of leadership were to provide redemption, such as in the excellent film "Twelve O'Clock High". Once the weak soldier works extra hard (in a painfully bad montage), the other bitter soldiers realize that the Canadian did the right thing. There are moments of what feels like professional moviemaking, only to falter and not have much follow through. Too much time is spent on this discontent over our hero, and too little time on the actual mission. This is partly because the film obviously had too little of a budget to film any large scenes. Most notable is the use of very bad scratchy stock film of paratroopers being inserted as part of an action scene. Competent filmmaking would excise that distractingly bad footage and edit around it.
Most of the effects budget went into the underwater scenes, which actually look pretty good. The sad truth is that in real life, the mission, to secretly blowup German ships while docked, wasn't successful. Here the film spends too little time showing the mini sub accomplishing its mission because they didn't have the proper budget to show a German ship blowing up (instead showing the view from about 15 miles away). This last minute climax serves too little too late to feel satisfying. I thought about the film "The Dambusters" as an example of a far more entertaining film showing another secret mission that actually was successful.
One thing of note was the musical score. For such a low budget affair, I found the soundtrack trying it's best to elevate the material. As for our hunk James Caan, there is too little for him to go on with his flimsy character. There are some stiff scenes where he casts some doubt on himself. But there is little follow-through. And oh yes, those bitter colleagues decide their commander has got the right stuff by the end.
I give it 3 out of 10, bad enough to be an episode of MST 3K.
Somewhere in this story the lessons of leadership were to provide redemption, such as in the excellent film "Twelve O'Clock High". Once the weak soldier works extra hard (in a painfully bad montage), the other bitter soldiers realize that the Canadian did the right thing. There are moments of what feels like professional moviemaking, only to falter and not have much follow through. Too much time is spent on this discontent over our hero, and too little time on the actual mission. This is partly because the film obviously had too little of a budget to film any large scenes. Most notable is the use of very bad scratchy stock film of paratroopers being inserted as part of an action scene. Competent filmmaking would excise that distractingly bad footage and edit around it.
Most of the effects budget went into the underwater scenes, which actually look pretty good. The sad truth is that in real life, the mission, to secretly blowup German ships while docked, wasn't successful. Here the film spends too little time showing the mini sub accomplishing its mission because they didn't have the proper budget to show a German ship blowing up (instead showing the view from about 15 miles away). This last minute climax serves too little too late to feel satisfying. I thought about the film "The Dambusters" as an example of a far more entertaining film showing another secret mission that actually was successful.
One thing of note was the musical score. For such a low budget affair, I found the soundtrack trying it's best to elevate the material. As for our hunk James Caan, there is too little for him to go on with his flimsy character. There are some stiff scenes where he casts some doubt on himself. But there is little follow-through. And oh yes, those bitter colleagues decide their commander has got the right stuff by the end.
I give it 3 out of 10, bad enough to be an episode of MST 3K.