Coming at the Second World War from an unusual angle for an American movie, Sam Peckinpah's tale of Germans retreating from the Russian front is as intelligent as it is violent. Pekinpah concentrates his direction on the conflict between two German officers in a platoon making the dash for safety, but expands that to consider the importance of the individual against the necessity of everyone pulling together to survive. The cast (Max Schell, James Mason, James Coburn and David Warner) all play to the best of their ability - which is considerable - and it makes you wonder what Pekinpah could have achieved if he'd returned to warfare as a topic after this.

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Based on Nicholas Monsarrat's best selling novel derived from his experiences on the North Sea convoys, The Cruel Sea is set during 'the battle of the Atlantic', as the U-boats attempted to destroy British shipping lanes and starve the country into surrender. The film follows the men of the Compass Rose, a small corvette protecting the merchant shipping, as they deal with the unseen menace of the submarines.

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