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Away All Boats
The story of USS 'Belinda', a U.S. naval ship, and its crew during the battle of the Pacific 1943-1945, as it prepares for action and landing troops on enemy beachheads.
Release : | 1956 |
Rating : | 6.2 |
Studio : | Universal Pictures, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Art Direction, |
Cast : | Jeff Chandler George Nader Lex Barker Julie Adams Keith Andes |
Genre : | Drama War |
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I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
the audience applauded
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
best movie i've ever seen.
In 1943, hard nosed Captain Hawks is placed in command of the Belinda, an attack transport ship responsible for ferrying Marines to Japanese held islands in the Pacific. Austere in character, the rigorous Hawks enforces sharp discipline on the Belinda's lackadaisical crew. He is met at first with resentment, but later wins the men's respect using tact whilst remaining firm. Hawks pushes the men beyond their limits as the Belinda fights it's way through some of the bitterest campaigns in the Pacific theatre.Away All Boats is dated flag waving at the best of times crammed with all the war movie clichés of the decade as well a strong share of wooden performances. The movie chunters along at a laboured pace with mostly desiccated dialogue and tight eruptions of action. It does get rather boring in the middle and we are fed spoonful upon spoonful of corniness. The romantic flashbacks involving Lt. MacDougall(the Belinda's second in command)and his wife forced me to cringe. I just found these flashbacks pointless and again clichéd, they're just so familiar and seem to be copied from at least 10 other movies. Then again I suppose every film of the 1940s and 50s had to have at least one character with a love interest. The 1950s morals surrounding husband and wife were just too forced. There are also some poor attempts at comic relief. Two sailors fight over a Coconut like a couple of kids which in turn instigates a brawl. I'm sorry but it made the movie feel all the more hackneyed. The main problem is that the script contained a few great ideas which were hashed together with mawkish plot devices in a rush. The piercing soundtrack, whilst commanding your attention, is nearly played non stop over endless shots of landing craft and Battleships.Apart from the movie dragging itself to the point of becoming tiresome, Jeff Chandler was excellent as the stern Captain Hawks, although he was trying too hard to channel John Wayne. He played in a lot of Universal's B westerns but his portray of Hawks in this movie is his most robust performance. He really hams it up without coming across as being too pretentious, therefore exploding with charisma in a lot of scenes and showing the viewer he cares about his character. His acting ability peaks during the battle near the end of the movie. At the sight of a burning Kamikaze hurtling toward the Belinda, the near crazed Hawks waves his hand in rage and screams above all the explosions and gunfire as it speeds ever closer "HARD LEFT, HARD LEFT I SAY, GET AWAY FROM MY SHIP, GET YOUR FILTHY PLANE AWAY FROM MY SHIP"!!!!!!. The plane crashes and the Bridge becomes engulfed in flames. Overacted maybe, but these few seconds are the greatest part of the entire film and the brutal aggression displayed by Chandler is an acting tour de force to be reckoned with!. The same cannot be said for much of the other actors, although Richard Boone was pretty good. The few action sequences were spectacular and crammed with all the suspense that director Joseph Penvey could muster. The use of colour wartime footage showing massive destroyer's cannons blasting islands to smithereens takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the battles of Makin, Saipan, Guam and others. The final Kamikaze attack on the Belinda was packed with amazing special effects and tautness and looked extremely professional. A lot of this action footage, including the shot of one of the Japanese planes crashing into the Belinda, various shots of anti aircraft batteries firing at the attacking planes and shots of the Belinda's crew struggling to douse the flames on it's deck were all pinched and inserted into The Battle OF Midway(1976). This is the only part of the movie which etches the realistic chaos of war into your mind.Away All Boats is given the cheap and corny treatment but is saved by a few dazzling sequences, but it's not up to much other than that. It's still worth watching for some of the sequences mentioned above though.7/10.
At the opening scene this movie feels like a wartime morale flick but it quickly moves past that. I like that it gives us a story that is seldom told, namely that of a heavy troop landing ship. Reminds me of the HMAS Tobruk I spent some time on in the 80s. The "Belinda" is a work boat, not a glamorous warship & the spartan conditions aboard reflect that. As the ship was newly built it is reasonable that the sets all look spic'n'span.Overall it is a well made war film with a strong cast of good character actors. As others note, special effects clearly developed quite quickly in the 1945-55 period. Time well spent.
This movie contains great examples of how to lead people, especially in extreme circumstances. Captain Hawks reports aboard a ship with a terrible record and sets about getting it and its crew ready to fulfill its mission as an amphibious landing ship. At the same time, he starts them on a project of building him a small sailboat. It seems like madness but is really a bit of camouflage. While the sailors are going through the constant drills and the laborious work of repairing their ship, they also have to do work that contributes to the sailboat. The grousing turns from their regular work to the hated sailboat. Soon nobody grouses about anything except the sailboat. However, when they pull into their next liberty port, with their ship squared away and their drill times excellent, they watch proudly as the old man sails his new boat past the other ships lying at anchor there, their captains green with envy at Captain Hawks' new toy.General Merrill McPeak did much the same thing with us when he was Air Force Chief of Staff. He kept us from grousing as much about the personnel drawdowns of the 90's by giving us a red herring to grouse about, namely a change to our uniforms. While the drawdowns were decimating our ranks, the thing you heard about the most was how people hated the new uniforms, how expensive they were, and how they made us all look like pilots for a commercial airline.I've always remembered that red herring example. Once it sunk in, I started recognizing it in other places like Patton's infamous order about the wear of neckties. Patton knew his men would hate that order. He also knew it would give them something to grouse about that he could discard if it became enough of a problem and in the meantime, it kept their minds off the heat, the sand and their fear of the next battle.Actually, for a movie about a boat that was not supposed to be a fighting craft, this is a pretty enjoyable piece of film. Jeff Chandler was magnificent. Richard Boone gives another of the solid performances that made him one of the most underrated actors who ever lived.I highly recommend that you check this movie out, especially if you are in a leadership role where you work.
My dad was an officer -- a "90-day wonder" -- during WWII on an attack transport ship like the one portrayed in this film. For that reason I found the movie meaningful. Much of the acting was too melodramatic for my taste, but that was in keeping with movies of this genre in this period. I mostly enjoyed the story of the ship itself -- the landing-craft drills and other aspects of service aboard an APA that brought my father's time in the war to life. (Like many WWII veterans, he rarely talked about the war.) Ironically, there's a scene where American ships fire on an American airplane by mistake; something like this actually happened during Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. My father's ship and others nearby shot down a British plane, not realizing until too late that it was a "friendly." C'est la guerre.