I'm a military buff and an ex-Navy man, so I'm drawn to this type of movie whether its good or a stinker. Dramatically, I thought this movie worked quite well. There's action, but the viewer isn't hit over the head with it (pun intended). There are elements of the movie that appeal to men (fishing for a submarine with a grapling hook) and elements that appeal to women (the admiral's poor daughter lost her fiance).
I'm not intimately familiar with the real story of the Squalus rescue that this movie is based on, so I may be wrong about this, but I suspect liberties were taken with certain facts in the name of dramatic license. For example, the diving bell almost didn't make it back to the surface on the last of four trips. Swede Momsen, our protagonist, jumps into the water to tie a line on the contraption then proceeds to exhort the crew to "heave!" the bell to the surface by pulling on the rope. I have a hard time believing that really happened.
The filmmakers did pretty well with the military courtesy, but I wonder if Momsen really got away with calling the admiral by his first name with enlisted men within earshot. There's also a scene where someone salutes the admiral indoors. (The Navy only salutes outdoors.)
And lastly, the multiculturalists evidently had something to say about the casting of this movie because there is a black crewman on the submarine and one or two black crewmen in the crowd on the surface. I guess I can't blame the movie makers for doing this because the alternative is to be criticized by black activists, but that's not the way the Navy was in 1939.
All in all, though, a good movie. I gave it a seven.
