Morituri (1965)

Director: Bernhard Wicki
Starring: Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Janet Margolin

Synopsis:
A German deserter living in India is blackmailed by the British to help capture a merchant vessel carrying a shipment of rubber from Tokyo by posing as an SS officer.

Impressions:
I stumbled on this movie one day while flipping through the channels and it piqued my interest, so I went back during a later showing to watch it all the way through. This is a rather good suspense thriller that knows how to judiciously build suspense and ramp up the tension leading into the climactic finale. This can be a difficult balance to strike. If you don't get the audience invested in the characters and the story, the time'll just drag. I emphasize this because a lot of movies fail in this respect. We have strong performances by the leads, with Marlon Brando as the shanghaied pacifist Crain who himself must slip into the role of the slimy SS officer Kiel and Yul Brynner as the honorable but conflicted Captain Mueller. You've also got dedicated Nazi XO Kruse (Martin Benrath) and political prisoner Donkeyman (Hans Christian Blech). I also liked the brief appearance by Trevor Howard as Colonel Statter, basically doing the same sort of thing he did in Father Goose. I'll also give a nod to Janet Margolin as the American prisoner Esther Levin. The insertion of a female character in a story like this is often poorly handled, but it worked out fairly well here. There's a lot of tense cat-and-mouse that makes for quite the ride. I strongly recommend this. Give it a watch.

Rating:
Watch It