The Sea Wolves

The Sea Wolves answers the pressing problem of how to repay the debt we owe to all those superannuated English stiff-upper-lippers now that all the major war campaigns have been filmed. Solution: dredge up some creaking piece of now-it-can-be-told war marginalia about a retired Territorial regiment of polo-playing boozers (The Calcutta Light Horse!) who bid goodbye to the memsahib for a fortnight and blow up some Jerry ships in Goa harbour. McLaglen previously demonstrated a certain competence with physical action in The Wild Geese, but here it's a very pedestrian hour-and-three-quarters before the final crunch - a risible affair with geriatric schoolboys wheezing about, getting hernias. Peck and Niven shamble amiably through the dross as if it were a Navaronian old boys reunion (class of '44), and Roger Moore finds new ways of smirking in a dinner jacket. As a genre - the arterio-sclerotic war movie - it'll never catch on. CPea.