Search - Action in the North Atlantic - Authentic Region 1 DVD from Warner Brothers starring Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Massey & Alan Hale on DVD

Shelly D. from YPSILANTI, MI
Reviewed on 6/4/2020...

We waited a long time to get a copy of this classic. It was a very good movie. It shows what it was like sitting out in the open water with only your knowledge to get you back home to family & friends. Humphrey Bogart was a great character.

3 of 3 member(s) found this review helpful.

Wartime classic - Bogart, Massey & crew deliver the goods!

Rottenberg's rotten book review | nyc | 12/13/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"They didn't sail powerful destroyers or fill the skies with waves of carrier-borne fighters, but the men of the US Merchant Marine nevertheless fought and won the second world war's most crucial and consistently bloody battles - the Battle of the Atlantic. This excellent film follows the travails of a merchantman bound for Russia's arctic port of Murmansk with a cargo of materials the Russians need to keep the Germans pegged on the eastern front. Through the war, American convoys sailed mass-built "Liberty Ships" through waters teeming with German planes, cruisers and U-Boats to keep both England and Russia properly equipped. While tides of war may have shifted thruought the war, allied convoys faced constant attacks by axis units until the end, relying mainly on their ability to absorb severe casualties.

This film is fiction and, produced during the war (1943) has the hallmarks of a propaganda film. But "Action" is so much more - with winning performances by Humphrey Bogart and Ray Massey, and a fine supporting crew that sounds like they may have actually sailed the dreaded "Murmansk Run". The special effects are astoundingly good for 1943 and hold up pretty well today. The Germans are perfect as skilled hunters - I still get a chill during the battle scenes when whole crews utter "torpedo - los!" - not quite dehumanized, but still fearsome. Crisp direction makes their untranslated lines the best case against sub-titles. This flick easily surpasses similar movies like "Air Force" in capturing the warime fervor while serving up a great story. In short, a great film."

Delivering the Goods...

D. S. Thurlow | Alaska | 05/25/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Much of Allied success in the Second World War depended on the delivery by sea of American munitions, tanks, and planes to our allies in Great Britain and Russia. The men of the U.S. Merchant Marine manned the liberty ships that delivered the goods against tremendous odds in the form of German submarine and aircraft attack. 1943's "Action in the North Atlantic", filmed while that battle was still in progress, is a tribute to their courage.

"Action in the North Atlantic" follows the crew of a liberty ship in their journey across the North Atlantic and then across the North Sea, bound for the port of Murmansk in Soviet Russia. Raymond Massy is the stalwart ship's captain, Humphrey Bogart his sympathetic lieutenent, and Alan Hale the rowdy but effective bosun's mate. The crew is the obligatory cross section of humanity, including a ship's engineer with a broad Scottish accent, a sailor whose feet hurt when a submarine is around, and an augmentation of young Navy gunners who help defend the ship.

The ship survives a hair-raising crossing of the North Atlantic, as German submarines repeatedly challenge its convoy. One German submarine in particular makes the war personal, pursuing the liberty ship into the North Sea. The climax of the movie is a suspensful cat-and-mouse duel to the death between Bogart, now acting ship's captain, and the wily German submarine captain. A mass burial at sea provides Bogart the opportunity to put into appropriate words the credo and patriotism of his merchant mariners.

For a wartime effort, the movie is remarkably even-handed. The German submariners are portrayed as the tough and competent fighters they were. The movie finds time to pay homage to the regular Navy and the Army Air Corps for their parts in the Battle of the North Atlantic. The special efforts pale in comparison to today's CGI, but were state of the art for the time. Real footage is intercut with the simulations to add to the effect of ships racing around the ocean.

This movie is very highly recommended as a suspenseful war movie and as an exemplar of its wartime genre.
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