I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Gary Cooper plays first officer of the steamship the Mary Deare, found drifting at sea by Charlton Heston, the skipper of a salvage vessel; Cooper says the crew abandoned ship after intentionally sabotaging the Mary Deare to collect insurance on her cargo, while the crew later claims Cooper ordered them off and was a negligent captain. Poor opening (wherein Cooper acts like a raving lunatic) and limp conclusion are redeemed somewhat by court of inquiry midsection, which at least provides for some good maritime melodramatics. The crew (hissable villains, a smug Richard Harris among them) are no match for a stubborn-but-honest merchant marine, so there's no surprise at the outcome, but the performances help carry the load. Square screenplay by Eric Ambler, based on the book by Hammond Innes, isn't the potboiler you may end up hoping it'll be. Handsomely shot by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg. Michael Anderson directed, without flair. **1/2 from ****

Although Gary Cooper doesn't appear on screen for the first ten minutes or so, this movie is clearly his. Charlton Heston is billed second, and while his part is substantial, Cooper ultimately gets the meat of the movie. It's downright striking when Cooper, as Patch, first appears. This sea-wary captain looks nothing like the dapper romantic lead we associate with Cooper. He's grizzled, tired and dirty from head to toe. Cooper never got his universally-praised swan song moment before he passed, mainly because critics at the time panned a wonderful little movie called Love in the Afternoon based solely upon the age difference between Cooper and Audrey Hepburn.You may not even notice, but there's very little dialog for the first forty minutes of this movie. There's such an eerie feeling, and so much going on visually, that dialog isn't even necessary. The special effects are stunning in this film. Everything in this picture, unlike contemporary movies, looks utterly believable. The beginning in particular has a few breathless sequences which certainly stand the test of time visually.This picture is directed very capably by Michael Anderson; it nearly became an Alfred Hitchcock production before Hitchcock decided to make a little film called North by Northwest instead. No matter, Anderson, of Logan's Run and Around the World in Eighty Days fame, does a fine job at the helm. Heston plays his part, Sands, very well; free of the grandness and scope that people usually peg him for from the epics. Richard Harris also takes the villain role which could have easily come off as silly and made it dangerous and creepy.I give this movie a 9 because I think the script could have used a couple lighter moments between Cooper and Heston. The ending scene, while a little short, was especially well-done. It takes on added emotional weight by the fact that this film would be Cooper's second to last. Watch this movie for Heston. Watch it for Harris. Watch it to see the pairing of two heavyweights in Cooper and Heston, but especially watch it for Cooper.

I realize that great special effects shouldn't make or break a movie, and they don't here, but they ARE really terrific. The shipwreck scenes in the beginning of the film are not only great for 1958, they're great by today's standards too. I'd love to see a making of documentary. I'm so bored with the special effects "making of" docs of today. It's always that everything was first shot against a green screen, and then come the interviews with the SPX guys telling you what they did and how hard it was to do. "Yep, we just programmed the computer and went for coffee while it rendered the action". Yeah, really impressive. No computer here. This is the true essence of what used to be a CRAFT. Albeit scaled down, everything you see here on the screen actually existed in real life and not in cyberspace. I don't know if anyone will ever read this, or even care to compare, but watch the similar ship scenes in the newer version of King Kong and then compare them to what was done here almost 50 years sooner. IMHO, the scenes in the 2005 "King Kong" look more like a very realistic cartoon! Same thing with this years "Flyboys". The dogfights had a lot of great "camera" angles and thrilling sequences, but nowhere near as thrilling as done almost 80 years before for "Wings". And besides, that cartoon look clashes with the live action stuff. Yes, NOT using a computer WOULD have made things harder for the "Flyboys" and "Kong" crews, but if they're really any good they would have come up with better results! That's why the director of "The Fugitive" crashed a REAL train for the film rather than stoke up the computer chips. You really want real, you have to have real in there someplace! I really think that the film industry has it backwards. Huge budget films should spend all that money on the harder to do but more satisfying "hand crafted" SFX and leave the computer generated junk for the low budget flicks.

Really good, sound drama with Gary Cooper and Charleton Heston involving the world of shipping and salvage. From the raging sea to the eeryness of an empty ship, to the court room and back it maintains a very good pace.