Truly Dreadful Film

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Admirable film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Morituri (1965) stars Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Trevor Howard, Janet Margolin, and Wally Cox. Morituri is Latin for "We who are about to die salute you."Brando plays Robert Crain, a German pacifist living in India during the Second World War. The Allies use blackmail to convince him to use his engineering expertise to disable a German ship carrying rubber from Japan. If he disables the "scuttling" mechanism of the ship, the Allies can recover the rubber, which was in short supply during World War II.Of course, no one knows why he is on the ship - he says he is a German official. The captain (Brynner) is a good German but he hates the Nazis. His first officer, however, is a party member. Some of the crew are political prisoners working due to labor shortages.Crain ultimately tells the prisoners his plan to give the ship to the Allies. Then some American prisoners and German naval officers are rescued from a Japanese submarine. Excellent film, with plenty of action as well as suspense. Both Brynner and Brando are excellent in their roles, Brando especially, sporting a perfect German accent and giving an underplayed performance. It's an old wives tale that Brando mumbled - he mumbled when the part called for it, and he had a good ear for accents. Sad to see Janet Margolin, who died of ovarian cancer at age 50.Recommended to those who like WW II films.

Don't know how anyone managed to make a crappy movie with such a good cast. The kindest thing I have to say about this movie is that it helped me get to sleep the night I watched it. Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Trevor Howard. All great actors but given this mishmash of a script even they couldn't save this turkey. Do yourself a favor and give this movie a pass. Janet Margolin was the only female in the cast, and she seems to just have been stuck in there as filler material. She really didn't factor in the story except to demonstrate how brutal and thuggish men can be with a helpless female. Anyway, a great waste of talent. Not my cup of tea at all.

I happen to like maritime tales and settings, so the previous reviewers' remarks about the engine room scenes being boring were actually fascinating to me (the reciprocating engines/engine room of this era ship is seldom seen). That said, the plot of this tale was a little busy for me...too many twists and turns, like it was racing from port to port to get as much in as possible. I love Brando and Brynner, and they don't disappoint: Brando's role as a German is as good as his similar role in "The Young Lions", which is to say outstanding. Brynner's tortured alcoholic skipper is equally rewarding. The introduction of a Jewish refugee--as a girl who survives by at once reviling sexual depredations forced on her by SS in her homeland and yet too quick to use her charms to manipulate her captors aboard ship--seems rather tawdry and gimmicky, to lure 60's era pubescent boys into the theatre. I found her Svengali-like "sex-stare" to unnerving and ridiculous. There are many good performances by several minor characters (the First Mate is one, Wally Cox anti-typecast as a morphine addict Ship's Doktor is another). GREAT cinematography--helo flying shots, wonderful angles). The end of the story is rather abrupt and unfulfilling...I thought perhaps they'd run out of cash. It appears they actually darned near destroyed an actual vintage freighter in the making of the movie...! All-in-all, a good sea yarn and war tale, but seemed to a vehicle to put Brynner and Brando together, with some gratuitous sex thrown in for those not viewers not attracted to the former virtues...

Skip it – If there's one thing this movie proves, it's that Marlon Brando has mastered the German accent. Unfortunately, this is not an action movie. Unless of course, you consider suspense to be action; in which case there is plenty of it. Brando is a pacifist who is blackmailed into becoming a spy for the allies. His mission is to disguise himself as an SS agent, go aboard a ship carrying a valuable cargo, and disarm the demolition charges so that the Krauts can't scuttle it. Yul Brynner is the anti-Nazi captain of the ship. This is a good spy movie, enhanced by the setting of nearly the entire movie taking place on a boat. But there is no fighting to speak of until the end. Also an abnormally dark movie for its time. Great story, but not a great action movie.