Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Kaydan Christian 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.

max843 This film was so meaningful to me. My grandmother's first cousin, Alexander Miller MacKinnon 19, drowned during a March 1942 attack while serving in the Merchant Marine.He was aboard the "Colabee," having just left Cuba with a load of sugar for Baltimore. 10 miles out they were hit by the German submarine U-126. 23 dead, 14 survivors. Ironically the U-126 was itself destroyed the following year with no survivors.As a child in 1940s Buffalo all our windows were carefully covered with black-out shades each evening. I heard the adults whispering that this was in case the Germans came up the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes but we did not really know U-Boats were operating so close to our shores.A year earlier Alex had been assigned to the SS Santa Elisa, hauling sugar cane from Chile to New York, arriving Christmas Eve 1941. But on the return trip to Chile in January 1942 the Santa Elisa was attacked, just as she left NYC carrying crates of safety matches and barrels of highly explosive carbide crystals. She was then towed back to the Brooklyn Yard for repairs. Which is why Alex was aboard the Colabee.After being refitted the Santa Elisa set out to carry gasoline from England to Malta as part of Churchill's 62 vessel Operation Pedestal. That August 1942 she was attacked a second time and torpedoed by Italian motorboats, the gasoline caught fire and she went up in flames off of Tunisia. (One account says no survivors; official MM record states no deaths.)Many parts of the movie show what our Merchant Marine was really going through. Yet it wasn't until 1988 that President Reagan signed the bill conferring Veteran status on all mariners who served in WWII, guaranteeing their benefits.

fedor8 Russkie 1: "It's a miracle!" Russkie 2: "That isn't a miracle! It's American seamanship."This is the kind of cheesy dialogue that steadily supplies the viewer in AITNA. This fairly solid little war movie, with some rather obvious occasional stock-footage, is blatant political propaganda. However, there is nothing wrong with that in times of war, especially a war against the Germans. One reviewer here refers to AITNA as a semi-documentary, which was quite a funny thing to read. So does that mean that Ed Wood's films are also semi-documentaries just because he used stock footage? Or was this guy referring to the "unbelievably realistic" dialogue here? Speaking of political propaganda films, if Michael Moore had made a movie about the war in 1943, it probably would have been called "The Nazis Love Their Children, Too", advocating that America immediately surrender. In it, he would have accused the last Republican President for causing the war in the first place.I always preferred this kind of Bogart, the type that doesn't speak through his teeth and says "dame" every 10 seconds.

DKosty123 This is a quality propaganda film about the World War 2 effort. It is designed purely to prop up the home front. It is quite effective in this effort.The cast- Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Massey, Alan Hale & Dane Clark is very strong. Granted the cast doesn't get a lot of quality dialog but it does pretty well with what they do have. The sailors wife is really well illustrated.A whole section of the film is kind of a World War 2 headline for diversity (which was invented way before the 1990's). It shows our hero's ship steaming into Nova Scotia & how diverse a fleet is there from many Allied Countries to ship war materials to fight the Nazi's.The action sequences in this war time film are well done, & the lack of mechanical detail had much to do with the war effort. While a type of sonar is mentioned, no mention is made of radar & everything appears to be quite crude. This doesn't make the action suffer.

annatrope 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.