Reviews

Robert Young plays a real heel. One of his conquests is killed and he is blamed. The film does not follow a formula. The ending is a shocker.

This film was released just 13 months before Pearl Harbor. WWII was already spreading its pall across Europe, the Far East and the Americas. Set on a tramp steamer bound for Great Britain in 1940 the film concentrates on the merchant seaman. There are no heroics in this film from anyone.

Contrast this with Warner Bros. "Action in the North Atlantic" made a couple of years later. In "Long Voyage Home" there are no heroic or patriotic speeches, just men doing a dirty job to earn their keep. The war raging around them is just one more nasty complication.

This film presents John Wayne in a totally different kind of role. Made just after "Stagecoach", Wayne is cast as a Swedish merchant seaman who is trying to go home to Sweden. His part is one of many in the cast. This film has been on television for years. It was not made by a major studio and was a staple on television stations that were trying to fill time. The fact that John Wayne was in the film was a plus. Fortunately the Criterion Collection has taken the film and made a decent print.

I have been waiting for a region 1 DVD of this film for several years. It used to be on television once in awhile, but that has not happened for a few years. I finally bought a used VHS tape of the film. The film has lost nothing since I first saw it. Jack Hawkins as Col. Hyde is a first rate army officer who has been passed over for promotion and kicked out of the service. Nigel Patrick as Major Race is an urbane small time gambler and crook who hasn't had a decent job since WWII ended. The rest of the people are also former army officers that have fallen on hard times for one reason or another. Richard Attenborough playing Lexy is a con artist with a genius for electronics. Roger Livesey is a part time deviate who was kicked out of the service for gross indecency. Hawkins as Hyde throws a luncheon for this group and some others that will make up his gang. In a great sequence he demolishes the facade each of his "gang" have built to shield themselves from their past. The rest of the film concentrates on a daring bank robbery the group planned.