Even the scenes aboard ship, while the captain is gritting his teeth and making momentous decisions, is shot not on a real bridge but on a cardboard replica of the flying bridge, where the set can be spare. Everything seems to take place in the studio. There IS some footage of an old four-piper snoozing along in the distance but for the most part the story is set bound. They obviously needed more money to do a decent job. Hit number one is just abaft the beam of the budget. Sadly, the film is torpedoed thrice, wallows briefly in the swells, then sinks head first into the unforgiving sea. It has all the makings of a great film, something along the lines of "The Cruel Sea," only this time ending with a daring attack that ends in victory. The story follows the refurbishing of a destroyer, the travails of its stern captain (Trevor Howard), the antics of a couple of its crew (Bernard Lee, baby-faced Richard Attenborough, Sonny Tufts), and the deliberate sacrifice of the ship during a commando raid on Nazi facilities in the French port of St. This one, called "The Gift Horse" in the US, is about one of those old, retired destroyers that were lent to Britain in 1940 as part of Roosevelt's Lend Lease program, a way of providing aid without alarming an isolationist public. The British made some fine war movies during the 40s and 50s, culminating with "The Bridge on the River Kwai," which may be the best ever made.
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