Well this is one movie title that's certainly not misleading. There's tons of action in this gripping WW2 movie about the Merchant Marine. I might even go so far as to say it's got the best and most realistic action sequences from any WW2 movie I've seen. I'm talking about movies made during the era not stuff made decades later with a gazillion dollar budget, of course. The story's about an American tanker crew that survives their ship being sunk by a German U-boat and spend eleven days adrift at sea before being rescued. They later return to sea on a Liberty ship leading a convoy. Once again they have to deal with the Nazis. What's not to like? It's a WW2 movie with colorful Warner Bros. character actors Alan Hale, Dane Clark, Peter Whitney, and Sam Levene backing up Humphrey Bogart and Raymond Massey. There's only a couple of (minor) female roles, played well by Julie Bishop and Ruth Gordon. Yeah the plot's pretty basic and the characters may seem clichéd but it's all put together so well that I didn't mind. There's something to be said for using a successful formula. The script is great with lots of funny lines and stirring speeches. Good music, both score and a nice rendition of Night and Day from a dubbed Julie Bishop. The photography is beautiful. The special effects are exceptional. The direction is terrific, especially in those spectacular action scenes. This is all the more remarkable when one considers director Lloyd Bacon didn't get to finish the picture. Bogart is great (as always) and his fans will love this one. Pretty much anyone who enjoys WW2 movies, particularly those from WB, will like this a lot. It's an emotional, exciting two hours of solid entertainment.

Episodic, boring and about a half hour too long, this is a pure WWII propaganda film for the Merchant Marine. Watching this on DVR, I found myself fast forwarding thru much of the seemingly endless propaganda speeches that litter this picture. The performances are, at best, adequate and at worst, dreadful. Warner Brothers usual array of character actors provide little, if any, "action" to this film. Alan Hale, whom I normally find enjoyable, chews up scenery at every turn. Raymond Massey is, well, Raymond Massey. Bogie does his best with what he was given but even he can't save this turkey. Stereotypes and clichés run rampant throughout the film. Some pretty good battle scenes don't save this flick from being a two hour exercise in tedium. All-in-all, this film is best for Bogie fans and Merchant seamen.

A cracking formulaic war propaganda piece that brings notice to the often forgotten work that the Allied Merchant Marines did during World War II. Lloyd Bacon directs with John Howard Lawson adapting from Guy Gilpatric's story "Heroes Without Uniform". Leading the cast list are Raymond Massey, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Hale, Dane Clark & Sam Levene. While Ruth Gordon & Julie Bishop play the two "filler" female roles of the girls left to fret back on dry land.The story follows the crew of the cargo tanker Northern Star, who at the start of the film are torpedoed by the Nazis in the North Atlantic. Out on a raft without food and water for eleven days, the surviving members of the crew are finally rescued by the Navy. Once recuperated, the men wait at home for another ship and finally get assigned to the Sea Witch, which is required to take supplies to Murmansk in the Soviet Union. What follows is a perilous journey as the Sea Witch is engaged in battles by a German "wolf pack".Brisk in pace, Bacon's film contains great 1940s special effects and has a number of excellently constructed action sequences. Successfully blending real life footage and model work with the work on the Warner's lot, the makers have managed to craft a piece that shows propaganda movies are not all boorish excuses for flag waving. Yes from the outset we are in no doubt that the German's are dastardly devils, the first twenty minutes of the film is both exciting and tense as "The Hun" try to obliterate our protagonists in a whirl of explosions and burning oil slicks. But at its heart is a very humanistic tale of a group of men from a cross section of ethnic backgrounds trying to keep it together as they do their bit for the war effort. These characters are well formed, and thankfully they are acted accordingly by the largely on form cast. Given a thumbs up over the years by veterans of the Merchant Marines, the film was also used as a recruitment tool for said service. That in itself is reasons for the movie to hold its head up high. That it's also a ripper of an action movie, with very interesting characters, doubly makes this a fine entry in the propaganda led genre of 40s war movies. 7.5/10

"Action in the North Atlantic" (1943) directed by Lloyd Bacon is or still is an adventurer hymn of joy to those who traveled and entering the bay, evicting the blockade to the Murmansk port during WWII, which impeached promissory vessels with the food help and also other material coming to Russia, after the victory in Stalingrad ground against German army. It is somewhat oldest as style, with a touch of war propaganda, that annoys its interest now and fabricated behavior as movie, notwithstanding its good spirit as a fiction almost narrated partly as a documentary about if not with some lines between characters on the boat. The scenes of the maritime workers union are powerful, as influenced by social convictions that were considered before as subversives for the bosses, but is there where is discussed the problem of ship wrecking during this kind of trips over the seas. Namely concerning wreckage of vessels, as only attended by any kind of civil cargo in that path and, by consequence, the increasing of the tremendous death toll of crews in the recent past, it is the dramatic jump for another step in the fight against closed influence by the top hierarchical oppression of any structure. Meaning that, however, humble people of sailors are strength enough for changing plans from the previous catastrophe of such an isolationist mind and irresponsibleness of supreme fighters, whom previously not had heard with accuracy the experiment of the survivors. Preparing continually courage for the worst, next in the darkness of the maritime fog inside the cargo, across mining undersea shelling sometimes with such horror people. Or, in a given sequence, when a submarine was waiting for a little bit of noise at surface, inducing that nearby Allies were there for well done, escaping after a war of nerves and sacrifices. The scene with the Russians squadron of airplanes, welcoming the ship's convoy of maritime cargo, it is one of the most ironic and best conceived for the time, as opening the space for the good will of the goods. That survived the successive battles on the trip made almost in closed atmosphere, during the most part of the story of this movie, made too with the anxiety from the condensed way of acting. Why not understanding the limits of the way, that Lloyd Bacon composed with fast understatement such a victory of humanity ? When this movie is considered still now, as a piece of warrior's art since then, with such an enthusiasm from the icy harbor of Murmansk, from the entire population, as common interest from the then spelled Allies of fortune.