i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Blistering performances.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

"The Deep Six" is a standard World War II actioner with credible performances almost torpedoed (pun intended) by Hollywood's need for sap, melodrama and comic relief.The film is based loosely on the bestselling novel of the same name by Martin Dibner. "Loose" is being kind. I recommend reading the book and only viewing the movie as a way to pass a few hours until the rain stops.Alan Ladd, who would die six years after this movie came out, plays Lt. Austen, a pacifist Quaker who, nonetheless, joins the Navy. He is sent aboard a destroyer as an assistant gunnery officer (a point made in the book, but left out of the movie). He spends the movie trying to overcome his pacifist ways, finally "being forced" to kill Japanese soldiers to save his shipmates. Alas, the whole moral quandary comes across as placid and lacks energy, much as Ladd's career was by the mid-50's.Ably supported by a veteran cast that includes James Whitmore, Keenan Wynn, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Perry Lopez ("Chinatown"), Nestor Paiva, William Bendix and Joey Bishop in his film debut. Look quick for Jerry Mathers (no, not as the Beaver), Ross Bagdasarian (better known as Dave Seville of "Alvin & the Chipmunks" fame), Robert ("Hideous Sun Demon") Clarke and Edd "Kookie" Byrnes without his comb.Though director Rudolph Mate does a good job with what he has, he is saddled with the book of Hollywood clichés. Bishop's character was added for comic relief as a womanizing sailor with a gal in every port. A hard-nosed officer acts the way he does because he is dying of cancer and wants to get a few of "them" before he dies, so he is forgiven for berating Austen and the crew. Austen leads a rescue mission so he can get the chance to overcome his pacifism under fire. Yada, yada, yada.The best way to describe this movie is "cowardly." It fails to explore any of the themes portrayed in the 1953 novel. Author Dibner based the book on his own exploits aboard the cruiser USS Richmond during the Aleutian Islands campaign.His book is almost just name only for the movie. A big reason is that Alan Ladd is one of the producers. By 1958, his career was on a downward slide because he refused to transition into older or supporting roles. He changed the movie to make his character virtually the only conflict in the movie.Case in point, in that book, Wynn's hard-nosed LCDR Mike Edge is Lt. Mike Edge, a sexual predator of sailors, as well as a virulent racist. Whitemore's commanding officer character is a coward forced back to sea because he makes too many enemies ashore. Austen has Quaker parents but does not espouse their beliefs. Zimbalist's Doc Blanchard is a drunkard.Slobodjian (Bagdasarian) actually lives to the end of the movie and is instrumental in stopping Edge. In the movie, he is rarely shown and gets killed before the halfway mark. Most egregious of all, the character of Henry Fowler, a black steward who is actually the best gunner on a ship (a cruiser in the book) desperate for gunners, is completely eliminated. Racism keeps him from getting that job until Austen convinces Meredith to let the man be a gunner during combat and a steward the rest of the time. But, Edge goads him into violence and tries to murder him twice. You can almost see an actor like James Edwards, Ossie Davis or Woody Strode in the role.The book explored racism, homosexual rape (present but always covered up in the Navy), archaic customs and practices that hampered the Navy during the early years of the war, the simmering resentment felt by Naval Academy graduates toward Navy ROTC and Officer Candidate School- commissioned officers and the continued decision of Naval brass to put unfit or undeserving officers in positions of authority. Also, the movie ends with a whimper of a mission, namely the one with Austen going on a secret rescue mission on a Japanese-held island in the Aleutians. In the book, the cruiser participates in the real-life Battle of the Komandorski Islands, which would have been a far greater climax for the movie.Overall, the film, as I've said, is okay. Joey Bishop's humor gets stale after a while (which is probably why he was always on the fringes of the Rat Pack). You also lose interest in Austen's pacifism, which becomes as interesting as his two-dimensional romance with Dianne Foster (in the book, it was central to Austen keeping his sanity).This is not a movie worth seeking out, but rather one to catch on TCM during an Alan Ladd marathon.Maybe one day, Hollywood will finally make a movie based on the book and not just the title.

The very subject of the movie eludes the director.The movie looks like some kind of cross between "Friendly Persuasion" (Wyler)and "the Caine Mutiny" (Dmytryk) Like Anthony Perkins in Wyler's movie,Alan Ladd's mom is a quaker and he was brought up that way and carefully taught;unfortunately he does not know where he stands anymore and whether he should or should not kill.Which is not that easy when you are in the navy.The lieutenant Commander,portrayed by Keenan Wynn ,recalls sometimes Humphrey Bogart in "the Caine Mutiny" ,(and also Richard Dix in Robson's "the ghost ship" )with his obsession with authority -he began his career as a private whereas Ladd went to college and became a reserve officer-Too bad the character is underwritten.The best does not come,IMHO,from the main plot ,but from the subplots:Frenchy,his missus and his Edith we get to know in a way,is an endearing character ,well played by William Bendix;the death of the two children's father is told with a great simplicity ,avoiding the maudlin side of melodrama;Private Aaron provides the comic relief with his numerous Armenian cousins;and there's a good scene between the Navy and the merchant marine about a jukebox.

This is one of a series of films made by Alan Ladd on the downhill side of his career after he left Paramount. A lot of them were good routine action stuff that had made him so popular in the 1940s. But he was getting older and wouldn't transition into older character parts.The Deep Six concerns a naval reserve officer who because of his Quaker upbringing freezes in a combat situation. The men on the ship lose confidence in him and his only friend is the CPO on the destroyer, played by William Bendix.In fact Bendix gives the best performance in the film. Ladd and Bendix did several films together at Paramount in the 1940s and they had a deep friendship and an easy camaraderie that comes through in The Deep Six. Bendix was a cut above a lot of the other character actors at Paramount, whereas he may have been doing character roles at Paramount, from the mid 40s on he was a popular radio and then TV star with his Life of Riley series.The rest of the cast fills their roles out nicely. James Whitmore, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Dianne Foster, and especially Keenan Wynn as the ship's hardnosed executive officer who is Ladd's chief tormentor. Look for Joey Bishop in a small role as one of the sailors.

The cast is terrific, especially the always under-appreciated Dianne Foster in a thankless role, and the dialogue is crisp. But most of the cast is considerably older than their roles, and this movie adds little new information. If you like character-study war movies, this is a good time. I give it 6/10.