Rumour has it that Howard Hughes loved this movie so much,
he insisted on the Las Vegas TV broadcaster he owned to screen the film over
100 times. For most of the rest of us, once will probably be enough to take in all
the fun that can be pulled out of this sub-par Alistair MacLean Cold War
thriller, a poor relation to The Guns of the Navarone and Where Eagles Dare.
It’s the middle of the Cold War and US submarine commander
Jam
es Farraday (Rock Hudson) is ordered to the North Pole to rescue a British scientific
team. However that mission is just a cover for the real goal – something to do
with retrieving a top secret gizmo from a crashed satellite. Farraday is
ordered to transport British intelligence agent “David Jones” (Patrick
McGoohan) to the Pole, who has bought Soviet defector Boris Vaslov (Ernest
Borgnine) along with him. En route, sabotage nearly downs the sub, and on
arrival the base has been nearly destroyed. Looks like there is a traitor on
board – but is it Boris or recently arrived marine Captain Leslie Anders (Jim
Brown)? Who can tell?
To be honest most people watching the film. It’s one of many
not-particularly-intriguing mysteries in a hopelessly over-extended film that
takes nearly two hours to get going, and then crams its paper-thin characters
into a series of adventures that bounce from dull to cliché with giddy haste.
Directed with a professional lack of engagement by John Sturges (who could
believe the director of Bad Day at Black Rock and The Great Escape
could have made something as flat as this?).
It’s a film that mistakes lack of explanations and rushed
conclusions for intriguing mystery. There is barely enough actual plot here to
sustain an hour and a half let alone the nearly two and a half hours the film
takes to get nowhere in particular. The middle of the film is given over to a
series of submarine escapades that would have already felt familiar at the time
from The Enemy Below and have been bettered since in countless submarine
films. From deep dives to furiously leaking compartments, there isn’t anything
particularly new here.
When we finally arrive at the polar base, there is finally
some decent mystery – as well as a haunting atmosphere – as the characters
explore the badly damaged base and its traumatised residents (You can see how
this film influenced John Carpenter as he directed The Thing). Sadly,
what the film hasn’t managed to do up to this point is make us care at all
about any of the characters. Rock Hudson, never a particularly inspiring performer, makes a dry and unengaging lead (first
choice Gregory Peck would have made the world of difference). Patrick McGoohan
does his best as the mysterious British agent, but the character is so lightly
written that you never really feel particularly intrigued by his mystery.
Ernest Borgnine chews the scenery as the ex-Pat Soviet while Jim Brown is
serviceable as the marine captain. Virtually no other character makes any real
impact.
The film culminates eventually in a confusing stand-off
between the Americans and the Soviets, until the villains reveal themselves and
a détente that doesn’t end up destroying the world is revealed. That’s about
the sum total of interest the film can spark. Other than that, it’s slow pace,
unengaging characters, uninvolving plot and unoriginal action make it a great
deal of fuss about nothing in particular. Howard Hughes may have wanted to
watch it a hundred times. You probably won’t want to.
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