Hard men divers. The end of World War II. Brave American lads are pushing the evil Japs all over the Pacific, and while victory is near, many more valiant soldiers will lay their heads in the name of freedom and democracy. And so that the losses of the US Navy were minimal, a special unit of military divers is working on this, which literally before each occupation of the island, neutralizes enemy submarine mines and hedgehogs. However, this time in the team of divers is not so smooth. The unit was forced to lead a frowny and correct Lieutenant John Lawrence (Richard Widmack), and the swimmers remember with great nostalgia the deceased of their previous commander - kind and responsive, unlike the newcomer.
The creators of “Divers” about 6-7 years late with the relevance of the release of the film. Such military-production dramas-agitations about the brave military, representing almost all types of troops, were filmed during the Second World War, and then such tapes for obvious reasons were in demand. The plot of those paintings were the same type to the edge - a military team solves an archival problem, someone dies, but the enemy is ALWAYS defeated. Nothing fundamentally new during the years of the war in this genre did not come up with, and the directors had no time to bother.
But after the war, the total demand for a victorious agit product naturally fell, and the tapes began to be presented with fundamentally different requirements - a drama, a serious plot, and necessarily memorable special effects were needed. All this is not in the work of Lloyd Bacon. The film completely lacks a tough production conflict, despite all the efforts to portray such with the participation of two conventional Hollywood stars - Richard Widmark and Dan Andrews. As this film showed, Widmark is interesting only with the roles of exalted characters - gangsters, half-crazy doctors, but certainly not in the role of correct and responsible warriors. Dana Andrews in this film and completely dissolved into inconspicuous diving grayness.
There is no exciting plot here (the corresponding Oscar nomination looks like a complete mockery in this regard). The whole movie divers quite the same type of laying mines under underwater hedgehogs, pulling ropes, jumping on floating boats (it looks spectacular only for the very first time) and waiting for the hour X... which becomes as ordinary as the very expectation of this “X”.
And finally, action. The whole drive in the film is reduced to the already mentioned jumping / tightening swimmers at speed from / into a rubber boat, and underwater shooting of men in underwear. Oh, yes, there was a series of underwater explosions, but for a post-war film with not the most leaky budget, it's almost nothing.
The verdict. In a literal sense, the movie of yesterday, which does not pull a pair of recognizable actors, and the overall plot is so.
6 out of 10