Morituri
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Movie Reviews of Morituri
Movie Review: MORITURI - 'WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE'
Summary: 4 Stars
It's 1942 in Japan and Captain Mueller (Brynner) has been assigned to take a German freighter loaded with rubber to France which will keep the German war machine going for at least another 3 months. A rag tag crew has been assigned to sail with him. The ship is a blockade runner meaning that they will try to make it through any enemy defenses and if it looks it will not make it, the Captain is required to blow up the ship. In India, a German citizen (Brando) who escaped Germany when the war began is being blackmailed by Allied forces to pose as a German SS officer assigned to duty on that ship. His mission is to defuse all the bombs set to destroy the ship so that when the Americans capture the ship, it will not blow up the precious cargo. Brynner smells a rat and keeps a short leash on Brando and a tense game of cat and mouse develops as Brando tries to find and defuse all 12 bombs. The mission becomes more complicated when a German Admiral brings a group of American prisoners on board who have been captured by a sub in the area. The Admiral wonders why a SS officer is aboard a cargo ship and decides to investigate. A lesser known film of both Brando and Brynner but a good WWII film. Not an action film but a battle of wits between two megastars. While you may not like the black & white, it's what gives it the mystery and intrigue and definitely adds rather than detracts. Enjoy. [...].
Movie Review: Brando's All this and World War 2
Summary: 4 Stars
MAD magazine once compared movies made after the war with movies made during the war. This is DEFINITELY one made after the war. Somewhat sympathetic toward our German hosts, Brando as an SS officer but in reality a hired spy for the Allies and Yule Brenner in one of his best roles as a Captain for the German Merchant marine now unsure of his countries policy and beliefs. Improbable but interestingly written, the plot surrounds a vital shipment of Rubber bound for the Axis powers. Brando is blackmailed into stopping it by not allowing it to fall into enemy hands. He has a toxic relationship with Brenner, a Captain with a reputation for being drunk on duty.He frequently mocks Nazi ideals and is disappointed in his son, a Nazi sub officer who sinks hospital ships for a living. He even tries to hide a Jewish woman from the usual crew of fanatics on board in a "good samaritan" sequence which never would have appeared in a war period picture. Filmed in appropriate and errie Black & White, it features an excellent supporting cast and Brando in a very interesting role. Well worth it, off the beaten path of the usual war picture and shows imperfections on all sides. The Title is based on the salute of Gladiators in ancient Rome about to die in the arena.Movie Review: Exceptional war drama
Summary: 4 Stars
Marlon Brando plays a German deserter and ex-patriot living in British occupied India unwillingly drawn into a war he doesn't believe in. Blackmailed by a British Commander (Trevor Howard), Brando goes undercover on a German freighter to try and disable explosives designed to scuttle the ship in case of capture. The hardnosed Captain (Yul Brynner) has Allied prisoners and a concentration camp survivor (Janet Margolin)that he's ferrying from Japan to German. More importantly, his precious cargo is desperately needed to fuel the war effort in Germany.Fox has done a great job transferring this fine film to DVD. The widescreen presentation and rich Deluxe vividly come to life with remarkable clarity and sharpness. While a couple of sequences look a bit soft, on the whole, the transfer is remarkably accurate and rich.
There really aren't any extras to speak of on this DVD. That's a pity. We do get the original theatrical trailer and preview trailer though.
Movie Review: Lost 1965 film starring Yul Brynner, Marlon Brando, Janet Margolin
Summary: 4 Stars
"Morituri" is a worthwhile, though ill-conceived lost film from 1965. It stars Yul Brynner, Marlon Brando, and Janet Margolin who all play anti-Nazi Germans during WWII. Brynner is a sea captain, Brando a pacifist forced by the British to help get the boat into Allied hands, and Margolin as the American-German-Jewish prisoner. It's good to see Janet in one of her few leading roles a few years after David and Lisa.
This scenario has all the ingredients of greatness, yet the film never rises to it as the plot is ill-concieved with an unfinished feel to it. However it's well worth watching rare performances by these actors.
DVD contains original teaser and trailer.
Movie Review: Better than its reputation but not as good as its potential
Summary: 3 Stars
That Morituri didn't exactly set the box-office alight in 1965 can be gauged from the fact that it's known under at least three titles (Saboteur and The Saboteur - Codename: "Morituri" - which isn't actually the anti-hero's codename!). Taking its title from the famed gladiator's address `We who are about to die salute you,' it's a surprising seabound reunion of veterans of the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty who you'd think would know better and certainly wouldn't even want to see each other again, let alone board another ship after that famously nightmarish shoot. While Trevor Howard had the good sense to remain on dry land in a lengthy cameo, Brando soon resorted to type, demanding rewrites, refusing to memorise his lines or hit his marks and generally making producer Aaron Rosenberg and director Bernhard Wicki's life hell as the film drifted increasingly over budget and over schedule before slowly sinking with all hands at the box-office.
Brando's Crain/Kyle is a peace-loving, somewhat Bohemian German exile living under an assumed identity in India who finds himself blackmailed into going undercover as a Nazi by Trevor Howard's ruthless British intelligence officer ("You're a cold b*****d," snipes Brando: "I was born on a chilly island," replies Howard in the film's best exchange). His mission isn't to sabotage and sink a German freighter with a vital cargo of rubber but to prevent it from being scuttled so the Allies can claim the cargo for their own war effort. Since much of the crew is made up of criminals and political undesirables less than eager to return to Germany, he finds himself occupying an intriguing moral grey area: Kyle's first and most useful ally is not found among the allied prisoners of war (many holding Janet Margolin's Jewish survivor of their torpedoed ship in as much open contempt as the Nazis) or Brynner's aggressively apolitical captain, but rather takes the form of the ship's second officer and most fanatical Nazi Party member Martin Benrath. The film isn't blind to the moral ironies and dramatic possibilities this presents and throws in numerous interesting spins and obstacles to his task, yet while it's not a bad film at all it's never really as thrilling or compelling as it should be.
Part of the problem is Brando, who had by then moved into that period of his career when he was increasingly bored with just delivering a solid performance and increasingly felt need to make his parts more eccentric to keep himself interested. It's a long way from the surreal self-indulgence of later films and it's not an especially bad performance, but rather than doing what the film requires you often get the feeling that you're watching him go through acting exercises as he drifts in and out of the film that everyone else is making. As a result it's Brynner, giving a typically arrogant and stentorian turn in a role originally intended for Lee J. Cobb who comes across as the more convincing screen presence despite having much less screen time and much less to work with.
It's on a technical level that the film impresses the most. The Oscar-nominated black and white camerawork is often astounding, with some of the most technically ambitious and flawlessly executed helicopter shots ever achieved on film, often moving from extreme long shots of the ship at sea into close-ups of characters on deck before tracking with them along the decks. In an age before Wescams or CGI the sheer physical difficulties in getting such remarkably smooth shots must have been extraordinary - between the seas and the wind alone hitting the right marks and focus points on a moving ship should have been next to impossible - making them all the more impressive, so it's a shame that at times the DVD transfer overcompensates for the deep blacks that are one of cinematographer Conrad Hall's trademarks and noticeably regrades and softens the contrast in some shots. Jerry Goldsmith's score fares better, its haunting East European main title played on the zither as ominous strings build up in the background doing services in a variety of guises alongside some striking action cues using the same mixture of rapid pared-down percussion, driving piano work and electronics that would become a hallmark of his Man From U.N.C.L.E. scores.
It's a shame that the infamous short film 'Meet Marlon Brando' about the star's increasingly peculiar behavior on the film's press tour (hitting on a passing black woman in a rather patronising attempt to make a point about racism, being typically vague at a press conference and offering the words of wisdom that "You won't know how to proceed in life unless you see Morituri.") isn't included alongside the film's two theatrical trailers.