Such a frustrating disappointment

Perfectly adorable

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

I'm sure the tactics used in this movie bar little on how things really went down, but the movie OK, or a solid "5".The story was decent and actually kept this thing moving along, action was good for a sub pick, acting was what you would expect from the cast. Only drawback was, like I said, the tactics and equipment used. PT boats as Japanese fast attack ships is one example. Like someone else mentioned, if Capt. Reagan was a commander of a sub in real life, he would've been fired or possible shot for the why he exposed his ship to the enemy. Which oddly enough was how the movie started when he saved his ship instead of one of his crew.I'm sure if Ron and Nancy weren't in it, it would've long ago been forgotten and rated a couple stars lower. But they are in it, and which makes it worth while to give it a view once, plus Fleet Admial Nimitz has a cameo!

I've seen this film a few times and it makes me cringe......And believe me I know my sub films!Ronny is as stiff as a board throughout the film....In fact, he conveys the claustrophobic feeling of being cooped up in a fleet boat during WWII better than any other film does...He's grim and wooden...It's nigh unto impossible to build up any feelings or emotions for anyone in the cast.Arthur Franz shines - as always, as the exec.......He's the one guy that manages to rise above the banal (make that abysmal) script and Nathan Juran's limp-wristed direction....It's kinda' like "Ed Wood does WWII".....Araggh!You can see swipes from all over the place.....The scene with the guys swimming underwater with flaming fuel above was lifted from 1943's "Crash Dive" done by Fox!!!! Also the footage from the scene with the jap sub surfacing was actually Dana Andrew's sub from the same film! Neat huh?....Then you take the underwater scenes with the divers wearing 1950's scuba equipment(!) dealing with the japs....Looks like it too was influenced by Fox - this time from 1951's: "The Frogmen"....Ouch!The few high points in this film stem from good location shots which appear to be off of Long Beach and Palos Verdes Penninsula aren't bad...No doubt shot on an old Gato class sub that was part of the active reserves....Take note of the typical cheesy Columbia budget-that's all too obvious! Mischa Bakaleinikoff's (Columbia's in-house composer)hokey soundtrack sounds like sloppy seconds from Columbia's 1955 sub/sci-fi flick: "It came from Beneath the Sea".This film might have been credible with a decent script, decent direction and decent acting.....But it isn't....If this movie were a sub wreck, even Bob Ballard wouldn't touch it!Try watching "Hell Below" if you want to see an outstanding sub film...They don't get much better!

You have to feel sorry for anybody who tries to write the screenplay for a submarine movie. How is it possible to avoid all the established clichés? The shattered chronometer, the bursting pipe, the ritual commands, the toy submarine nosing through the murk, the wounded skipper lying on the deck and ordering the boat down, the periscope slicing the sea, the tin can approaching at high speed, the pinging sonar gear, the tense sweaty faces, the walloped camera as the depth charge explodes, the conflict between the CO and the Exec, the playful bantering of the crew, a down-the-throat shot.Added to that are the problems that any Navy movie has. The men have no chance at individual heroism and practically none of being dramatically wounded. (Unless one of them gets appendicitis or has a torpedo fall on him, which happens from time to time.) Basically, the crew are there for comic purposes, so the burden of the drama must fall on the officers. The question can never be about who is going to rush out with his tommy gun and save the rest of the patrol, so it can only be about whose judgment is correct, the skipper or one of his officers. (Sometimes a romantic conflict on the beach is thrown in, but that's rather arbitrary, kind of like the appendicitis patient.) This one isn't too bad, as sub movies go, but it arrives late in the post-war genre. Nobody in it is weak. The enemy is dehumanized, the dialogue trite and exhausted, the action scenes shot on the cheap, and the story is twisted, hard to follow, and sometimes pointless. (Example, midway through the movie a great deal is made of Captain Reagan's having brought back an accurate chart of the Japanese mine fields, but when the subs are sent out en masse it turns out the mines have been moved around so the chart is now irrelevant.) The performers do as well as they can under the circumstances, although Nancy Reagan is definitely in the wrong part here. The right parts would have been those taken by the elderly Bette Davis. The cast has a lot of familiar faces, but none of them memorable because of their having given good performances elsewhere, only memorable because we've seen them so often before.The director should be spanked. A man is knocked about during a depth charge attack and is taken to sick bay. After he's been treated and bandaged up, there are still trickles of blood down his chin and the side of his face. Once winces at such sloppiness. And there is another painfully staged scene, when Reagan and Davis are saying good-bye. Davis's face is in the foreground. She stares unblinkingly just to the left of the camera's lens while Reagan stands behind and speaks to her over her shoulder. This particular part of cinematic grammar must antedate cinema itself.Should you see it? Well -- why not. It's a historical curiosity if nothing else.

US Navy submarines bravely try to penetrate the heavily-mined entrance to the Sea of Japan, in order to sink enemy shipping which is carrying coal, food and iron from China to the Japanese homeland.On one level a simple war action movie, this film is also a commendable study in the morality of leadership. The central question posed by the movie is whether a commander's duty towards a single seaman in obvious danger outweighs his overall responsibility to his crew.Ronald Reagan is very good as the straight, correct Captain Casey Abbott. Back at Guam he has a girl, a nurse in the military hospital (Nancy Davis, to give her her professional name). When a frogman who is also a rival for the nurse's affections gets into difficulties, Captain Casey has to try to separate personal and professional motivations.Casey's Executive Officer, Dan Landon, clashes with his skipper but by a twist of fate finds himself having to make a very similar decision. Will he call the plays differently?The film works as an uncomplicated war story, but does contain a few infelicities. The submariners are depicted as nice guys in order to enlist viewer sympathy, but this is a little overdone and the sailors come across as childish simpletons, stealing cookies and hiding their dice. Wes Barton has to be portrayed as a popular guy so that we will resent his treatment at the Captain's hands, but to have sailors pleading for a Barton story as he is entering the airlock on a dangerous mission is just unbelievable. The crew of the USS Starfish get sealed orders for a special mission. They are to enter the Straits of Tsushima, land a party on a fortified island, and destroy its defences. Would an ordinary submarine crew really be entrusted with such a specialised task? The frogman sequences are shot in murky water and are hard to follow. Penetration of the minefield channel is effected in a few seconds, when such an undertaking would surely last many hours.For contemporary viewers, much of the film's interest will lie in the unique experience of watching Ron and Nancy onscreen together. They had been married for five years when "Hellcats" was made, and at the time of writing, 42 years later, they are still going strong. It is tempting, if unwarranted, to scrutinize their lines for significant snippets. Ronald Reagan's character is asked what he will do after the War and he announces, "I'm going into the surplus business." Given his leadership style, some would say that was an accurate prediction of both his gubernatorial performance in California and his presidency. Much of Ron's dialogue is an essay on the burden of leadership, and how only a special few are fitted to bear it. Nancy confides to him, "You know I was fresh out of a bad marriage when we met. I wanted to be sure this time. So we played it safe, until I knew you were Mr. Right." In fairness to the Reagans, that, at least, has proved to be autobiographical.