The Sea Wolves

They just turn up in films like this.

I loved this film. The combination of these great old stars and charecter actors having a lark in a war film. Fantastic.

The trick with this film is not to take it too seriously.

Just sit back and release your grip on reality for a couple of hours.

Pity we don't get more films like this today.

Yes, Peck had a hard time with holding a British accent, Costner's Robin Hood didn't even try.

Yes, there were a bunch of older actors in it, it's about older characters.

No, it doesn't have an explosion a minute or a bunch of hard bodied guys or gorgeous babes, that's not what this movie is about and it doesn't need them.

It's about a bunch of geezer who, despite being a bit over the hill, still have some sense of adventure and a bit of fight left in them.

When viewed from that perspective this movie does the job very well.

It doesn't need the repeated and obviously fake explosions and computer generated torn body parts that seems to be the requisite for contemporary adventure films. It's a relatively subdued spinning of a yarn based (loosely, I suppose) on a true story.

It's heartwarming to watch the bunch of old soldiers (admitedly, not too much older than myself) pull it together one more time.

On one of those cold, bleak winter afternoons when you're feeling that you might have missed out on a few of life's adventures, watch this movie and let yourself think, maybe, just maybe there's still a chance to live them.

Based on a true story, the Sea Wolves are a geriatric impossible mission team called back to duty after 40 years of retirement with the offer of a dangerous mission that carries no hope of reward or recognition for their efforts. And they jump at the chance!

The movie itself is rather average, but the story is great fun, and more suspensible at times than one might expect. It suffers only from a decidedly 1970s made-for-television feel to the production, though the story is set in 1943. But even this drawback is ameliorated somewhat by closing credits where images of the real-life heroes from World War II are juxtaposed with those of the actors who immortalized their heroism in this film. Well worth watching.

True WWII story about a commando-style mission undertaken by a group of middle-age semi-retired British Cavalrymen in 1943 . The crew of veteran saboteurs (most of them formed by veteran actors as Trevor Howard , Patrick Mcnee ,Morgan Sheppard , Terence Longdon and several more besides ) commanded by Gregory Peck and David Niven are assigned the dangerous operation by the general (Kenneth Griffith) to blow up a German ship called Ehrenfels that carries a radio station located in the port of Marmagoa . They must destroy a transmitter in Goa , a Portuguese colony and neutral territory . As the end credits of this movie state , "during the first 11 days of March 1943, U-boats sank 12 Allied ships in the Indian Ocean , after the Light Horse raid on Goa, only one ship was lost in the remainder of the month¨. The film is dedicated to the memory of the honorary colonel of the Calcutta Light Horse , Admiral of the Fleet the Earl Mountbatten of Burma , K.G. 1900-1979 . The producers wish to thank the Government of India and Administration and peoples of Goa and to pay tribute to commander B.S. Davies whose skill and courage at the helm of ¨Phoebe¨ contributed so much to the success of the mission . There are not the ¨Sea Wolves ¨of the title also called ¨Wolf pack¨ , that refers to the Nazi U-boats that are doing the shipwrecked and damage on the Allied fleet.

This exciting film contains intrigue , suspense , noisy action scenes ,fascinating battles and an enjoyable love story with treason and tragedy between Roger Moore and Barbara Kellerman who results to be the main fascination of the film . Other chief excitements about the movie, will be in the intervention of famous British secondaries who realize professionally competent interpretations , some of them with no more than a line or two to say as Allan Cuthberson ,Patrick Allen , Donald Houston , Jack Watson , Grahame Stark , John Standing , Percy Herbert and several others . Vibrant and rousing musical score by Roy Budd with agreeable final song titled ¨The precious moment¨ sung by the usual Matt Monroe . Colorful and evocative cinematography by Tony Imi .

The picture finely directed by Andrew V. McLagen is based on the book ¨Boarding party¨ by James Leasor who took actual events for his writing , these are the following : On reserve since the Boer War, they are most noted for their attack with members of the Calcutta Scottish against the German ship, Ehrenfels. The operation was organized by SOE's India Mission. It was kept covert, to avoid the political ramifications of contravening Portuguese neutrality in Goa, and was not revealed until thirty-five years afterwards, in 1978. The Ehrenfels was known to be transmitting information on Allied ship movements to U-boats from Mormugao Harbour in Portugal's neutral territory of Goa on 9 March 1943.The Light Horse embarked on the barge Phoebe at Calcutta and sailed around India to Goa. After the Ehrenfels erupted in a fireball and was sunk by the team of British saboteurs, British intelligence dispatched an open message over the wire falsely warning that they would invade Goa. The crews of the other two German ships in the Harbour, the Drachenfels and Braunfels, received the message and scuttled their ships in Goa's Harbour in the belief that they were protecting their ships from capture by the British. Italian ships in the Harbour were also destroyed. In 1951 all three ships were salvaged.

The Sea Wolves is based on a true incident in which a bunch of middle aged and more than middle aged old soldiers from the British Raj in India got together and blew up three German freighters interned in the Port of Goa on the western coast of India.

The British had a delicate diplomatic problem. For over 300 years Goa and some surrounding suburb was Portugese territory and Portugal under Salazar was neutral in World War II. Made it a place for a whole lot of intrigue. The Nazis had a transmitter on one of those ships that was relaying information about allied shipping and the U-boats were cleaning up.

You might ask why it was the Nazis and not the Japanese. Very simply the Japanese never developed any real submarine capability just as the Nazis disdained developing aircraft carriers. Had both done so, World War II might have turned out differently, at least that's a pet theory of mine.

Gregory Peck and Roger Moore get the job of doing something about the spying and the transmitter. Roger Moore goes into Goa and does a little counterespionage. He certainly as James Bond has the right credentials. He even has a fling with the head Nazi who is a woman played by the very beautiful Barbara Kellerman.

Peck trains a force of former members of the Indian army now retired and waiting for the Raj to end as everyone but Winston Churchill knew it would. David Niven, Trevor Howard, Allan Cuthbertson, Patrick MacNee are some of men employed to go into Goa harbor and do away with those ships.

These are patriotic men whose country is in her biggest crisis and feel helpless in not being able to be of service. It's that way when you've spent your life in the military. When the opportunity knocks, they kick down the door.

In a recent biography of David Niven it's mentioned that Niven enjoyed being reunited with his Guns of Navarone co-star Gregory Peck and another guy who he had worked with, Trevor Howard. But the film was done in actual location in India and it was sometimes 140 degrees fahrenheit. It was pretty stressful and it exacerbated the symptoms of an undetected Lou Gehrig's disease that eventually took David Niven from us.

I remember in the early sixties Goa was eventually just taken over by India. The Portugese had a lease there just as they did at Macao and the British did in Hong Kong. But the Indians just weren't that patient.

The Sea Wolves is a good and entertaining film about a little known and very minor operation during World War II.