This comes across as a rather cheaply made movie, minimal production values, and that's a shame, because it has a very fine script delivered by very fine actors, chief among them Peter Finch, who delivers Alan Breck Stewart's lines like the Shakespearean actor he was, rolling those r's and turning the prose into poetry. Yes, the ships at sea look like they're in a bathtub, it's true, and the backgrounds, which could have been beautiful, are not, because the color is not that good.
But the script is first rate, and so is the acting, and that wins the day.
This is a story of male bonding, of a boy who becomes a man by going through trials under the supervision of a man. The sort of thing Kipling did so well a decade later in Captains Courageous - turned into another first-rate movie, if a less faithful one, with Spencer Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew. This is something of the same thing, except that, rather than riding the high seas, the duo wander through the dangers of the Scottish Highlands.
It would have benefited from a better score, but still, I strongly recommend it. It is infinitely better than the sad travesty produced for no discernible reason by Masterpiece Theater.
