The British made some splendid war movies in the post-war years. No kidding. Grainy, black-and-white, it didn't matter. "The Dam Busters", "Dunkirk", and "The Cruel Sea" were as good as any that were made, and that's not even counting later full-color epics by David Lean.

"The Sea Shall Not Have Them" isn't really among the best. It does have Malcolm Arnold's stirring martial music going for it, and some stiff-upper-lip acting, but the stereotypes abound. The new kid who screws everything up. The stern, handsome, fair skipper. The tough Flight Sergeant. The hand moaning about his errant wife. The briefcase full of secrets that one of the downed fliers carries.

A Lockhood Hudson is shot down in 1944 in the North Sea. The pilot is wounded but the other two crew members (Dirk Bogarde and Bonar Colleano) manage to launch the rubber life raft and get their VIP passenger (Michael Redgrave) and his briefcase full of documents aboard. Bogarde's character is well-enough written but he gives the worst performance of his career, almost enough to deflate the raft. Despite his valiant efforts to the contrary, there's hardly a moment when he doesn't gloriously, triumphantly wreck the scene. The airplane sinks and there they sit. Four men in a tub. And, man, is it cold and wet, cold enough to threaten one's very existence.

Meanwhile, a rescue launch full of stereotypes is out looking for them in the mist. There's a mine field. There are German shore batteries that open up on the launch as it speeds to the rescue. The marine footage is real.

It's the only action in the film but that's okay because the preceding hour and a half or so has been suspenseful and informative. The humor is a bit too broad to work well. It reminds me a little of Bogart's "Action in the North Atlantic." There's not much action there, either, but one learns about convoys, submarines, and the Merchant Marine.

It's rather second-tier stuff but it belongs to a genre that was much better than most of the material being put on the screen, like the sad rendering of Norman Mailers "The Naked and the Dead" or the soap operatic "Battle Cry."

Here's an obiter dictum. The briefcase-clutching Michael Redgrave doesn't have much to do except protest that his message MUST get through, and he's grown a bit plumper than he was in, say, "The Lady Vanishes." Yet that voice is a powerful instrument. Americans don't really know much about World War I because we entered so late, but Europe and Russia suffered enormously for four years. If anyone wants to hear Redgrave at his best, listen to his heartfelt narration for "The Great War," available on YouTube.