Product Details

• Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Massey, Alan Hale, Ruth Gordon
• Directors: Lloyd Bacon
• Format: NTSC
• Subtitles: French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Warner Brothers
• Run Time: 127 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000J6Y92A
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #25,421 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This is an Authentic Region 1 DVD from Warner Brothers released on October 3, 2006. Includes, Vintage newsreel, Musical short 'Cavalcade of Dance', Classic cartoon 'Greetings Bait', Trailers for Action in the North Atlantic and Northern Pursuit, Credit Where Credit Is Due featurette, Radio show with George Raft and Raymond Massey (Audio-Only).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wartime classic - Bogart, Massey & crew deliver the goods!, December 12, 2006

By	Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

They didn't sail powerful destroyers or fill the skies with waves of carrier-borne fighters, but the men of the US Merchant Marine nevertheless fought and won the second world war's most crucial and consistently bloody battles - the Battle of the Atlantic. This excellent film follows the travails of a merchantman bound for Russia's arctic port of Murmansk with a cargo of materials the Russians need to keep the Germans pegged on the eastern front. Through the war, American convoys sailed mass-built "Liberty Ships" through waters teeming with German planes, cruisers and U-Boats to keep both England and Russia properly equipped. While tides of war may have shifted thruought the war, allied convoys faced constant attacks by axis units until the end, relying mainly on their ability to absorb severe casualties.

This film is fiction and, produced during the war (1943) has the hallmarks of a propaganda film. But "Action" is so much more - with winning performances by Humphrey Bogart and Ray Massey, and a fine supporting crew that sounds like they may have actually sailed the dreaded "Murmansk Run". The special effects are astoundingly good for 1943 and hold up pretty well today. The Germans are perfect as skilled hunters - I still get a chill during the battle scenes when whole crews utter "torpedo - los!" - not quite dehumanized, but still fearsome. Crisp direction makes their untranslated lines the best case against sub-titles. This flick easily surpasses similar movies like "Air Force" in capturing the warime fervor while serving up a great story. In short, a great film.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delivering the Goods..., May 25, 2008

By	D. S. Thurlow (Alaska) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Much of Allied success in the Second World War depended on the delivery by sea of American munitions, tanks, and planes to our allies in Great Britain and Russia. The men of the U.S. Merchant Marine manned the liberty ships that delivered the goods against tremendous odds in the form of German submarine and aircraft attack. 1943's "Action in the North Atlantic", filmed while that battle was still in progress, is a tribute to their courage.

"Action in the North Atlantic" follows the crew of a liberty ship in their journey across the North Atlantic and then across the North Sea, bound for the port of Murmansk in Soviet Russia. Raymond Massy is the stalwart ship's captain, Humphrey Bogart his sympathetic lieutenent, and Alan Hale the rowdy but effective bosun's mate. The crew is the obligatory cross section of humanity, including a ship's engineer with a broad Scottish accent, a sailor whose feet hurt when a submarine is around, and an augmentation of young Navy gunners who help defend the ship.

The ship survives a hair-raising crossing of the North Atlantic, as German submarines repeatedly challenge its convoy. One German submarine in particular makes the war personal, pursuing the liberty ship into the North Sea. The climax of the movie is a suspensful cat-and-mouse duel to the death between Bogart, now acting ship's captain, and the wily German submarine captain. A mass burial at sea provides Bogart the opportunity to put into appropriate words the credo and patriotism of his merchant mariners.

For a wartime effort, the movie is remarkably even-handed. The German submariners are portrayed as the tough and competent fighters they were. The movie finds time to pay homage to the regular Navy and the Army Air Corps for their parts in the Battle of the North Atlantic. The special efforts pale in comparison to today's CGI, but were state of the art for the time. Real footage is intercut with the simulations to add to the effect of ships racing around the ocean.

This movie is very highly recommended as a suspenseful war movie and as an exemplar of its wartime genre.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS IS ONE GREAT MOVIE............, November 2, 2006

By	OILMAN "OWEN" (bayside, new york United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

IF YOU ENJOY WORLD WAR TWO NAVAL MOVIES, YOU WILL ENJOY THE STORY OF THE MERCHANT MARINE TRYING TO GET SUPPLIES TO THE ALLIED TROOPS IN EUROPE DURING THE WAR YEARS WHEN U BOATS PROWLED OFF THE UNITED STATES AND TRIED TO SINK OUR MERCHANT SHIPS........I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FINE FLICK TO COME OUT ON DVD............I"M LOOKING FORWARD TO WATCHING IT AND I RECCOMEND IT TO ANYONE WHO ENJOYS A GOOD THRILLER.........