A quiet masterpiece, 22 Aug 2008
I just watched this film for the third time. It is a quiet masterpiece, the kind of restrained, understated, emotional film that someone like Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't make to save their lives.

Telling the story of ordinary men, and a few women, struggling to get through World War II without becoming monsters or going crazy, it is gripping, compelling, at times very frightening and full of understated pathos. For me, it is definitely a three-hanky movie, particularly the scenes where men are dying in the water, drifting away into the blackness, thinking their last thoughts.

What comes across most keenly is perhaps the constant, urgent need to suppress grief, and the sense of a whole generation who are forced to kill, see their loved ones die, and lose friends and family.

My parents fought in this war and I know they were damaged by it. This film has that same exhausted, bitter, desperately disillusioned feeling.

Brilliant performances from a whole slew of British character actors, including Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden and Denholm Elliott and lots of lovely cameos.

Simply superb!, 08 Jul 2008
Simply superb, you will not read a better book about leadership, sacrifice and courage than this book. A wonderfully written book that brings home the realities of the longest battle in the second world war, the Battle for the Atlantic.

As a measure of how well regarded this book is by the Royal Navy, for those young RN officers undergoing training at Britannia Royal Naval College this book is given as a prize presented to the Cadet with the best performance in leadership.

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

Eerie, 28 Apr 2007
Like all the reviewers of this film I admire it passionately. I too revere every one of the actors/actresses who gave such memorable contributions to this extraordinary film which has everything and yet, no reviewer to date has mentioned the import of the late, private scene in the film - on the bridge - between the dogged, but insistent concussed Captain, (Jack Hawkins) and his doubting Thomas, No.2 officer (Donald Sinden), that there is a silent enemy beneath the bows of the vessel they and their crew know as She.

When Donald Sinden finally, threw in his lot and wholeheatedly committed himself to the Captain I believed in the eerie, ineffable, mysterious and untaught and was/am convinced of an invincible brotherhood.

I watched the film over but that particular scene has never registered in the same way. Perhaps I'm nuts.

A quiet masterpiece, 22 Aug 2008
I just watched this film for the third time. It is a quiet masterpiece, the kind of restrained, understated, emotional film that someone like Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't make to save their lives.

Telling the story of ordinary men, and a few women, struggling to get through World War II without becoming monsters or going crazy, it is gripping, compelling, at times very frightening and full of understated pathos. For me, it is definitely a three-hanky movie, particularly the scenes where men are dying in the water, drifting away into the blackness, thinking their last thoughts.

What comes across most keenly is perhaps the constant, urgent need to suppress grief, and the sense of a whole generation who are forced to kill, see their loved ones die, and lose friends and family.

My parents fought in this war and I know they were damaged by it. This film has that same exhausted, bitter, desperately disillusioned feeling.

Brilliant performances from a whole slew of British character actors, including Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden and Denholm Elliott and lots of lovely cameos.

Simply superb!, 08 Jul 2008
Simply superb, you will not read a better book about leadership, sacrifice and courage than this book. A wonderfully written book that brings home the realities of the longest battle in the second world war, the Battle for the Atlantic.

As a measure of how well regarded this book is by the Royal Navy, for those young RN officers undergoing training at Britannia Royal Naval College this book is given as a prize presented to the Cadet with the best performance in leadership.

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

Eerie, 28 Apr 2007
Like all the reviewers of this film I admire it passionately. I too revere every one of the actors/actresses who gave such memorable contributions to this extraordinary film which has everything and yet, no reviewer to date has mentioned the import of the late, private scene in the film - on the bridge - between the dogged, but insistent concussed Captain, (Jack Hawkins) and his doubting Thomas, No.2 officer (Donald Sinden), that there is a silent enemy beneath the bows of the vessel they and their crew know as She.

When Donald Sinden finally, threw in his lot and wholeheatedly committed himself to the Captain I believed in the eerie, ineffable, mysterious and untaught and was/am convinced of an invincible brotherhood.

I watched the film over but that particular scene has never registered in the same way. Perhaps I'm nuts.

A quiet masterpiece, 22 Aug 2008
I just watched this film for the third time. It is a quiet masterpiece, the kind of restrained, understated, emotional film that someone like Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't make to save their lives.

Telling the story of ordinary men, and a few women, struggling to get through World War II without becoming monsters or going crazy, it is gripping, compelling, at times very frightening and full of understated pathos. For me, it is definitely a three-hanky movie, particularly the scenes where men are dying in the water, drifting away into the blackness, thinking their last thoughts.

What comes across most keenly is perhaps the constant, urgent need to suppress grief, and the sense of a whole generation who are forced to kill, see their loved ones die, and lose friends and family.

My parents fought in this war and I know they were damaged by it. This film has that same exhausted, bitter, desperately disillusioned feeling.

Brilliant performances from a whole slew of British character actors, including Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden and Denholm Elliott and lots of lovely cameos.

Simply superb!, 08 Jul 2008
Simply superb, you will not read a better book about leadership, sacrifice and courage than this book. A wonderfully written book that brings home the realities of the longest battle in the second world war, the Battle for the Atlantic.

As a measure of how well regarded this book is by the Royal Navy, for those young RN officers undergoing training at Britannia Royal Naval College this book is given as a prize presented to the Cadet with the best performance in leadership.

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

Eerie, 28 Apr 2007
Like all the reviewers of this film I admire it passionately. I too revere every one of the actors/actresses who gave such memorable contributions to this extraordinary film which has everything and yet, no reviewer to date has mentioned the import of the late, private scene in the film - on the bridge - between the dogged, but insistent concussed Captain, (Jack Hawkins) and his doubting Thomas, No.2 officer (Donald Sinden), that there is a silent enemy beneath the bows of the vessel they and their crew know as She.

When Donald Sinden finally, threw in his lot and wholeheatedly committed himself to the Captain I believed in the eerie, ineffable, mysterious and untaught and was/am convinced of an invincible brotherhood.

I watched the film over but that particular scene has never registered in the same way. Perhaps I'm nuts.

A quiet masterpiece, 22 Aug 2008
I just watched this film for the third time. It is a quiet masterpiece, the kind of restrained, understated, emotional film that someone like Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't make to save their lives.

Telling the story of ordinary men, and a few women, struggling to get through World War II without becoming monsters or going crazy, it is gripping, compelling, at times very frightening and full of understated pathos. For me, it is definitely a three-hanky movie, particularly the scenes where men are dying in the water, drifting away into the blackness, thinking their last thoughts.

What comes across most keenly is perhaps the constant, urgent need to suppress grief, and the sense of a whole generation who are forced to kill, see their loved ones die, and lose friends and family.

My parents fought in this war and I know they were damaged by it. This film has that same exhausted, bitter, desperately disillusioned feeling.

Brilliant performances from a whole slew of British character actors, including Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden and Denholm Elliott and lots of lovely cameos.

Simply superb!, 08 Jul 2008
Simply superb, you will not read a better book about leadership, sacrifice and courage than this book. A wonderfully written book that brings home the realities of the longest battle in the second world war, the Battle for the Atlantic.

As a measure of how well regarded this book is by the Royal Navy, for those young RN officers undergoing training at Britannia Royal Naval College this book is given as a prize presented to the Cadet with the best performance in leadership.

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

Eerie, 28 Apr 2007
Like all the reviewers of this film I admire it passionately. I too revere every one of the actors/actresses who gave such memorable contributions to this extraordinary film which has everything and yet, no reviewer to date has mentioned the import of the late, private scene in the film - on the bridge - between the dogged, but insistent concussed Captain, (Jack Hawkins) and his doubting Thomas, No.2 officer (Donald Sinden), that there is a silent enemy beneath the bows of the vessel they and their crew know as She.

When Donald Sinden finally, threw in his lot and wholeheatedly committed himself to the Captain I believed in the eerie, ineffable, mysterious and untaught and was/am convinced of an invincible brotherhood.

I watched the film over but that particular scene has never registered in the same way. Perhaps I'm nuts.

A quiet masterpiece, 22 Aug 2008
I just watched this film for the third time. It is a quiet masterpiece, the kind of restrained, understated, emotional film that someone like Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't make to save their lives.

Telling the story of ordinary men, and a few women, struggling to get through World War II without becoming monsters or going crazy, it is gripping, compelling, at times very frightening and full of understated pathos. For me, it is definitely a three-hanky movie, particularly the scenes where men are dying in the water, drifting away into the blackness, thinking their last thoughts.

What comes across most keenly is perhaps the constant, urgent need to suppress grief, and the sense of a whole generation who are forced to kill, see their loved ones die, and lose friends and family.

My parents fought in this war and I know they were damaged by it. This film has that same exhausted, bitter, desperately disillusioned feeling.

Brilliant performances from a whole slew of British character actors, including Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden and Denholm Elliott and lots of lovely cameos.

Simply superb!, 08 Jul 2008
Simply superb, you will not read a better book about leadership, sacrifice and courage than this book. A wonderfully written book that brings home the realities of the longest battle in the second world war, the Battle for the Atlantic.

As a measure of how well regarded this book is by the Royal Navy, for those young RN officers undergoing training at Britannia Royal Naval College this book is given as a prize presented to the Cadet with the best performance in leadership.

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

Eerie, 28 Apr 2007
Like all the reviewers of this film I admire it passionately. I too revere every one of the actors/actresses who gave such memorable contributions to this extraordinary film which has everything and yet, no reviewer to date has mentioned the import of the late, private scene in the film - on the bridge - between the dogged, but insistent concussed Captain, (Jack Hawkins) and his doubting Thomas, No.2 officer (Donald Sinden), that there is a silent enemy beneath the bows of the vessel they and their crew know as She.

When Donald Sinden finally, threw in his lot and wholeheatedly committed himself to the Captain I believed in the eerie, ineffable, mysterious and untaught and was/am convinced of an invincible brotherhood.

I watched the film over but that particular scene has never registered in the same way. Perhaps I'm nuts.

A quiet masterpiece, 22 Aug 2008
I just watched this film for the third time. It is a quiet masterpiece, the kind of restrained, understated, emotional film that someone like Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't make to save their lives.

Telling the story of ordinary men, and a few women, struggling to get through World War II without becoming monsters or going crazy, it is gripping, compelling, at times very frightening and full of understated pathos. For me, it is definitely a three-hanky movie, particularly the scenes where men are dying in the water, drifting away into the blackness, thinking their last thoughts.

What comes across most keenly is perhaps the constant, urgent need to suppress grief, and the sense of a whole generation who are forced to kill, see their loved ones die, and lose friends and family.

My parents fought in this war and I know they were damaged by it. This film has that same exhausted, bitter, desperately disillusioned feeling.

Brilliant performances from a whole slew of British character actors, including Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden and Denholm Elliott and lots of lovely cameos.

Simply superb!, 08 Jul 2008
Simply superb, you will not read a better book about leadership, sacrifice and courage than this book. A wonderfully written book that brings home the realities of the longest battle in the second world war, the Battle for the Atlantic.

As a measure of how well regarded this book is by the Royal Navy, for those young RN officers undergoing training at Britannia Royal Naval College this book is given as a prize presented to the Cadet with the best performance in leadership.

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

A good companion to this book, 11 Jun 2008
Written by someone who experienced WWII in convoy escort duty, The Cruel Sea is quite realistic in a double sense: You get the drama of the war as well as the times when war is dull or frustrating, for example when an officer dumps paperwork onto subordinates. Realistic without being cynical is a good combination.

And if you'd like to read another book on this theme but with more of the immediacy of the war, try C. S. Forester's, The Good Shepherd, the classic account of a single convoy at the height of the war with U-boats as told by the captain of a US destroyer. Unfortunately, new it seems to be available only in an overpriced but ugly reprint, so you might want to find a used copy. I have a paperback version that I reread every few years.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

Eerie, 28 Apr 2007
Like all the reviewers of this film I admire it passionately. I too revere every one of the actors/actresses who gave such memorable contributions to this extraordinary film which has everything and yet, no reviewer to date has mentioned the import of the late, private scene in the film - on the bridge - between the dogged, but insistent concussed Captain, (Jack Hawkins) and his doubting Thomas, No.2 officer (Donald Sinden), that there is a silent enemy beneath the bows of the vessel they and their crew know as She.

When Donald Sinden finally, threw in his lot and wholeheatedly committed himself to the Captain I believed in the eerie, ineffable, mysterious and untaught and was/am convinced of an invincible brotherhood.

I watched the film over but that particular scene has never registered in the same way. Perhaps I'm nuts.