Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

gavin6942 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.)

ma-cortes 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"

dickc-671-863112 I saw this for the first time in 48 years on Netflix last night. The only visuals I remembered were 1-Janet Margolin with a bullet hole in her forehead 2-the Nazi assistant captain with a bloody forehead from banging on the ships side 3-the innovative(for 1965) helicopter wide shots.I had totally forgotten about the plot and any character development. Brando was coming off of some scathing reviews in "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Ugly American" and was about to go southern in "The Chase" so definitely a low time for him. Yul was Yul and Wally "Mr. Peepers" Cox was playing lost again like he did in "The Bedford Incident". If this were made 5 years later Janet Margolin would probably have shown more skin and fared better than a few Woody Allen movies. Oh yes, Trevor Howard makes a cameo appearance as Trevor Howard. The Netflix print looked like it had been stored in the trunk of a 1963 Volkswagen at the neighborhood junk yard. Too bad because th B+W kind of gave it a Noirish tone. I don't know if it was B+W to save money or to create a mood or just to say it was Brando and Brynners last B+W movie.

secondtake Morituri (1965)I had no expectation here. The name was odd. And the description was odd--a WWII film from the point of view of the enemy. Sort of. And so I didn't really think I'd be fully captive.And I was. This is a special film war film. For one thing it has Marlon Brando being his arrogant best, and Yul Brynner, too. It presents an odd dramatic situation, a tension between strong willed characters who don't quite know what the other is up to. Here I mean Brando playing a German plant on this ship going from Japan to Europe, and Brynner, the captain, a disgruntled German with some experience both with the wheel and the bottle. The ship is a modern (1942) Japanese ship, and among the crew are a bunch of political prisoners, who of course can't be totally trusted. The cargo is rubber, the most sought after material in the early war (later it would be uranium, I suppose).Cinematographer Connie Hall is quite aggressive and brilliant with his photography, keeping the angles and movement nearly constant. The light is dramatic, the sharpness clean. And he got nominated for an Oscar for his work. The interior of the ship is large and filled with strange turns, great heights, lots of interior and exterior spaces that take you by surprise. Beautiful stuff.The plot moves more quickly than you'd expect, too, with little surprises and turns, like finding a burning American ship at night and rescuing survivors. One of these is a young woman who was born in Berlin and they question her--why is a German on an enemy ship? And she says she is not German. And they ask what is she? You expect here that she might say she was American, but even better she says, "I am anti-German."The script is tight and believable. The scenario, which is not formed from fact as far as I could discover (it's based on a novel), seems reasonable. And it ends up being more subtle than you'd expect. Yes, there are aspects that are obvious dramatic additions--the one woman who appears, for example, happens to be Jewish--but these end up being ways of showing people's characters. Ultimately that's what this movie is about.