I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

"Seven waves away" or "abandon ship!" ,the latter being a more appropriate title ,is a British disaster movie based on real facts ;but a disaster movie which has almost nothing to do with the epics of the seventies.There is no Manicheism ,nothing like the good guys (and the smart young child) who are saved -except for a few exceptions ,for instance when they sacrifice their life-and the villains who get punished .The characters as far as clichés as they can be (one of the ship-wrecked suggest each of them tell his story ,to no avail) .No Hollywood touch except may be in the last final sequences .This is one of Tyrone Power's most important roles (with "the razor's edge" and "nightmare alley")and he reveals himself a great actor here :I dare you to like his skipper (and I dare you to hate him too).After you've seen the movie ,you will not be able to decide if he acted like a hero or a like a monster.A six months sentence may be not enough or might be too much,depending on whom you ask ,or on how YOU perceived the story.After watching it ,you will feel uneasy .Apart from Tyrone Power ,the cast is uniformly good ;pre-Messala Stephen Boyd particularly gives good support .If you are looking for something like "Poseidon adventure" ,you have to move on.Like this? try this..."Le Radeau De La Méduse" Iradj Azimi,1998

Seven Waves Away is the story of ship's officer played by Tyrone Power who to save the people in his charge after a shipwreck has to cast several of them adrift so the bulk can be saved. The only thing that 100% of those who view this harrowing tale is they pray that such a responsibility never falls on them.I'm not sure it was peace or war time that this story is supposed to have taken place. The ship is an ocean liner on a round the world cruise. But what happens is that it strikes a loose mine floating out in the south Atlantic, 1500 miles from the coast of Africa. I can't believe that people would be taking cruises in the middle of a war nor would any pleasure ships be sailing.As Tyrone Power describes it, the mine didn't just strike the ship in one spot. It went under the ship and bounced along the bottom and when it exploded, it cut the ship right in half. It was down faster than the Lusitania when it was torpedoed. Less than 10 minutes, no lifeboats launched, no distress signal sent.The boat they're on is the captain's ship to shore craft. It accommodates nine and twenty seven are in Power's charge as the senior ship's officer. Who's to live and who's to die?Mai Zetterling is on the boat, she's Power's girl friend, a fact noted with some resentment by others, but she's a nurse. Lloyd Nolan is another officer who sacrifices himself after telling Power what his duty is. Best performance in the film is that of Moira Lister who's a society woman and a swimmer. She's just full of cutting remarks about the 'brave captain'. The film lists Ted Richmond as producer, but a silent partner in the venture was Tyrone Power. His performance as the ship's officer with a double Job like burden is excellent. He was well past his youthful days as a romantic idol and it's sad to think he would be dead next year because any number of parts would have opened up for him. This one in fact should have netted him an Oscar nomination.Seven Waves Away is a film not for the faint hearted.

Abandon Ship/Seven Waves Away is a very powerful and difficult film to watch, made a little more palatable by the presence of one of film's great matinée idols, Tyrone Power. I'm sorry one of the posters didn't find him sexy. That man oozed sex from every pore of his body - just ask anyone who came within two feet of him, including his costar in this film, Mai Zetterling. Their torrid affair is discussed in vivid, oh so vivid detail in her autobiography - a whole 18-page chapter.Sex aside, this film comes off as a great deal grittier than Lifeboat. For me, Tallulah Bankhead was so dazzling in Lifeboat, much of the focus was on her, which somehow dissipated a lot of the tragedy. The two films are similar, though, on some plot points. However, due to Bankhead, there was some humor in Lifeboat. Abandon Ship/Seven Waves Away has none.The film will keep you glued to your seat, but it is not easy to take, as it is unrelenting in its message and harrowing scenes. You will suffer along with each person who is sacrificed so that others may live.It's great to see Tyrone Power in a meatier role, and I do believe his career would have taken some exciting turns, both on stage and screen, had he lived past the age of 44. His face was a total curse (to him only) and got in the way of serious acting pursuits for years. His performance in Abandon Ship is excellent and stands as one of his best. There are other films where he had a tendency to tighten up, but this wasn't one of them. It's a shame about him - like so many men of that era, he always had a cigarette in his hand; in Power's case, it was suspected he had heart trouble, but he was in denial about it and didn't want it verified. So we're stuck with what work of his we have, and a lot of it is pretty darn good.** According to Mai Zetterling's book, All Those Tomorrows, the cast sat in a boat floating in a large indoor tank at Shepperton Studios. There were wind and wave machines and a watershoot pouring cold water on the cast. A starting pistol had to be used to start action as there was no way to hear the director. In the end, the whole film was dubbed because no one could hear. Zetterling had a nearly three-year affair with Power, which gets a chapter in her book.

I saw this movie twenty years ago and thought what absolute nonsense.Overly melodramatic with the three persons Tyrone Power briefly encounters at the beginning."Have you seen her? Have you seen her?" Said to be based on a true story, I made inquiries back then and was told that there was indeed a ship that sank as quickly as this one, the fictitious Cresent Star, was purported to have done, but there was no incident with an officer passing survivors off of a lifeboat into the water. The officer himself was pure fiction.There is a remake with Martin Sheen about 1975. This one proposes a trial of some sorts afterward.In truth, there was several incidents on the Titanic alone that involved lack of room in lifeboats, one such situation was the lifeboat had standing room only and the survivors appeared to be walking on water as they edge of the boat was that close to the water, but no one was passed over the side.This movie possessed no more thought and insight other than to go "what would you do?" if you were in a similar situation.I couldn't help but notice there would even be an incident with a shoe, which occurred in Hitch's Lifeboat.I think Mai Zetterling threw the shoe overboard.Just a lot of intense, overly melodramatic nonsense.Definitely check out Lifeboat for much greater thought and human development.