The Sea Wolves

1981 "The Last Charge of the Calcutta Light Horse"
6.3| 2h0m| PG| en
Details

A German spy is passing on information about the location of Allied ships in the neutral harbor of Goa, India, with catastrophic results. Unable to undertake a full military operation in the Portuguese stronghold, English intelligence brings out of retirement a crew of geriatric ex-soldiers, veterans from World War I, using their age as cover. These old soldiers are asked to take to the seas and pull off an unlikely undercover mission.

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Reviews

Karry Best movie of this year hands down!
UnowPriceless hyped garbage
Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good
Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
Mike Beranek This movie warrants a technical 3/10 but for the many ways it ends up being intriguing and funny for all the wrong reasons, and the way it is all carried along by a briskly-paced direction. The clumsy misogyny of Roger Moore's character, the tendency of the all-too-obvious Mata Hari type person to corpse when Roger delivers his lines, and so many other things worth a chuckle. Gregory Peck attempting an English accent is a hoot. The movie's alleged basis in fact is interesting as the story has an archetypal oddball-Brits-pull-it-off-again feel. However there is no missing that dialogue is pitiful, the relationships implausible - both brotherly and romantic. The smutty banter is straight out of Carry On film tradition. There's so little to feed the mind on the menu with no real historical context, and a meagre helping of just a few very thin back stories. So to get the best of this film, do adjust your expectations and take this quirky offering lightly, and in good humour and to best enjoy the ride.
Leofwine_draca This affectionate wartime thriller sees a bunch of old timers meeting up for one final mission, their aim to destroy a trio of German ships that have been responsible for destroying many allied ships off the coast of India. It's a nostalgic movie that harks back to the good old days of derring-do and stiff upper lips, and I have to say that I enjoyed the feelings and memories it evoked. It's also pleasing to see a film entirely populated (for the most part) by "old" actors who prove themselves just as capable as their younger brethren.The film isn't perfect by any means and in fact it's rather rough around the edges: the running time is bloated and I would have preferred the exclusion of all the sub-plots surrounding Roger Moore's character. Moore is playing a Bond type in rather laborious subterfuge scenes in which he visits casinos, beds a beautiful woman (Barbara Kellerman, who went on to be the White Witch in the BBC LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE), has a few shoot-outs with German henchmen, and tracks a deadly traitor. Sadly, all of these moments are extraneous to the central plot and drag the pacing down. Moore is at his cheesy worst despite the presence of his twinkling blue eyes and he makes half the film feel like a sub-Bond outing.The scenes involving the gang of old codgers aboard their boat are far better and a lot of fun. I loved the way these aged heroes play against stereotype, raring to go and looking for action despite the creaks and groans. Gregory Peck adopts a fine British accent as the chief hero, and he's supported by a quite wonderful cast of familiar British faces: David Niven, Trevor Howard, Patrick Macnee, Patrick Allen, and Percy Herbert to name but a few. The actual storming of the German ship only takes place in the last twenty minutes of the film, but it's a riveting and action-packed climax and one that (rarely) doesn't disappoint.
Critical Eye UK Pretty much a period piece when it came out -- not the content, but the style of movie-making itself -- 'The Sea Wolves' is another of those examples of cinematic abuse that make the viewing of the results so disappointing an experience.A re-tread of just about any and every Brave Brits / Nasty Nazis war movie churned out by UK studios large and small in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, the surprise here is that production occurred in 1979 / 1980 rather than 30 years earlier.What's no surprise, however, is the degree of self-indulgence that infuses efforts like this, i.e., take a true-life story, promote your wares on the back of it. . . but change almost everything in it to fit box office conventions of the day.Appealingly lethargic at its outset, where the script certainly does map something of the genesis of the Ehrenfals raid, things then rapidly fall apart with the introduction of Roger Moore in a dinner jacket chatting up a villainess in a casino. Obviously nothing of the kind ever happened, and had this been but a minor diversion it may be easily overlooked. However, as the Spy Who Loved Me bit accounts for at least a third of the over-long film, it can't be ignored.If this inept fiction -- and inept it most certainly is -- doesn't do for Seawolves, then the finale certainly does: writer and director presumably got together and said ah, well, better have a shoot-out here, as if it's the OK Corral they're chronicling rather than a mission to disable a German ship.Thus it is that several scenes which never occurred in reality unfold with hilarious unreality: never have so many True Brits been shot in the arm, or missed at point blank range, than here, nor have so many really Bad, Bad Germans been mown down only to sneakily turn over after dropping dead and shooting back.It's rubbish, and annoying rubbish at that.But where Seawolves truly irks is its sustained deceit to be drama-doc rather than popular fiction. The facts are that the boarding party was detected as soon as it set foot on the vessel and the crew, thinking it was a regular Brit military operation, immediately set off charges pre-installed in the hold and engine room so as to scuttle the Ehrenfals and prevent her from falling into Allied hands.The ship was in no more than 80 foot of water so sank quickly and obligingly to the bottom, almost dragging the Phoebe with her. There was no gun battle, no hand to hand fighting, and despite SOE's ludicrous claim to have subsequently fooled the Germans into sinking the other two vessels by sending some kind of phony wireless message, the truth is that once the Ehrenfals had gone down, the crews of the other two vessels likewise scuttled theirs.Ends.Of course, the ordinary, middle-aged (and older) folks who actually participated in the raid weren't to know that. This motley bunch of solicitors, managers, accountants, jute growers, export clerks and retirees left their homes, their jobs, and their families to freely embark on a venture that could have claimed the lives of every one of them. That took guts. Real, genuine, shining courage.Seawolves, of course, has no grasp of this kind of truth, so makes no salute to it. Instead, there's one cliché after another, strung together on the pretext that, somehow, This Is How It Was.When it wasn't.Worthy of 1 out of 10 on release (for its location photography) it's today worth 4 out of 10 for the screen presence of Trevor Howard, David Niven and Gregory Peck. Sadly, we'll not see their like again. Rather more happily though, we're unlikely to see anything as embarrassingly bad as Seawolves again, either.
Claudio Carvalho In March 1943, in the World War II, the Germans use the neutral harbor of the Portuguese colony of Mormugoa to transmit information to a U-Boat about the allied ships to sink them in international waters. In Calcutta, the British Intelligence assigns Colonel Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Captain Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore) to spy in Goa and they discover that there are three German vessels anchored in the area and the famous spy Trompeta (Wolf Kahler) is based in Goa. They kidnap Trompeta to interrogate him but Lewis accidentally kills the spy after fighting with him in the runaway car. Meanwhile Gavin has one night stand with the gorgeous and elegant Mrs. Cromwell (Barbara Kellerman), who is the partner of Trompeta. They fail in their mission, but Lewis and Gavin convince their chief to use the veterans from Calcutta Light Horse led by the retired Colonel W.H. Grice (David Niven) to travel to Goa on board of the old ship Phoebe, pretending to be drunken businessmen on holiday. They prepare to destroy the Ehrenfels and the two other Nazi radio ships and get the German secret codes under the command of Lewis. Meanwhile Gavin on shore has a love affair Mrs. Cromwell and prepares the diversion to facilitate the mission of Lewis and his men."The Sea Wolves" is an entertaining adventure apparently based on a true but incredible story. The use of retired military in the operation in a neutral zone seems to be too fantastic and romantic to be true and does not make sense why risky the operation exposing old men and not real soldiers. Would it make any difference to England after the sinking of twelve allied vessels? The unknown Barbara Kellerman is really a pretty woman and tailored for the role of a seductive spy. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Espionagem em Goa" ("Spionage in Goa")