The Sea Wolves (1980)
WB DVD (region 4)
d. Andrew V. McLaglen; pr. Euan Lloyd; scr. Reginald Rose; novel. James Leasor; ph. Tony Imi; m. Roy Budd; ed. John Glen; cast. Roger Moore, Gregory Peck, David Niven, Trevor Howard, Barbara Kellerman, Patrick Macnee (120 mins)
The wartime adventure movie is usually associated with a number of popular widescreen spectacles of the 1960s, such as the Alistair MacLean adaptations of The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. However, this type of moviemaking was considered decidedly out of fashion when director Andrew V. McLaglen turned to the genre a decade later for two unusual movies, The Wild Geese and The Sea Wolves, both scripted by Reginald Rose and starring Roger Moore, then in the middle of his successful tenure as James Bond. Indeed, McLaglen would be one of the directors Moore trusted to bring his persona beyond Bond. But, whilst The Wild Geese was a bleak and cynical vision of mercenaries in modern warfare, The Sea Wolves was almost its antidote, a deliberately patriotic and old-fashioned throwback to British World War Two adventure and, in a deliberate nod to The Guns of Navarone, also featured members of its cast. Although McLaglen had by then directed a number of unusual westerns with John Wayne and James Stewart respectively, and had at least one genuinely stunning film in the shamefully neglected Fool’s Parade, he was better known to critics as an efficient but anonymous craftsman. Indeed, it is that image that seems best suited to the pleasures to be had from The Sea Wolves, although many critics could not get beyond the anachronism of the genre and the age of the stars.
The Sea Wolves concerns an unusual wartime mission, which publicity at the time of the film’s original release held as the last great untold mission of World War Two. A number of Allied ships have been sunk perhaps too easily and a spy is suspected somewhere in India. This spy must be exposed and terminated as soon as possible. However, the tell-tale radio transmissions have been traced to one of three German ships in the then neutral Portuguese colony of Goa. Gregory Peck and Roger Moore go to investigate but cannot carry out the full implications of their mission for fear that it would violate the colony’s neutrality and thus could also malign Britain’s international position. Politics and pragmatism seem at odds. However, Peck hits upon a plan to involve a number of ex-British soldiers, now civilians in India, to pose as drunken civilians and to sail around the coast of India to Goa and there board and sink the German vessels, careful not to be caught lest any official British involvement be suspected in such a politically charged mission. For help, Peck soon turns to his old friend (David Niven) and the members of the Calcutta Light Horse Brigade, in the process giving these old men a chance to fight again for the glory of the declining Empire. There are dangerous obstacles in their way, as the spy may have additional knowledge. Still, the mission must go ahead before more Allied ships are jeopardized. read more