Good concept, poorly executed.

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The main interest here is the period detail. Those who make films today set in the 1940s ought to have a look and listen - then they might not make some of the mistakes of language and tone that are so common. However, we have to face the fact that this film is a cheap flag waver. The first third drags as we go through some unconvincing stories about the home lives of the sailors, mostly done in the "chirpy working class" mode that the British entertainment industry favoured at the time. The main story is far-fetched and the Danish village is made of the cheapest painted cardboard. During the war it was obviously important not to scare the families on the home front too much, with the result that there is little real sense of danger on the sub and hardly any casualties. In contrast, think of "Das Boot" with everyone bathed in sweat, cooped up in claustrophobic conditions, breathing foul air and scared out of their wits. It's not like that here. Despite the food and fuel running out and depth charges going off all around, everyone is pretty much calmness personified. On a positive note, the Germans are real ones and speak correct German, which was good going for a wartime film.

This is the film "In which we serve" should have been.Unfortunately Mr Coward's starry - eyed love letter to Mountbatten was woodenly directed and totally dominated by "The Master"'s ludicrously mannered performance whereas Puffin Asquith is like David Lean without the pomposity and directs with real flair.This is particularly praiseworthy as he was working completely within the boundaries of propaganda(as was - to be fair,Mr Lean - but Asquith managed to avoid the worst excesses of stereotyping),in particular with his lower deck characters none of whom are the plaster saints so memorably patronised by Mr Coward. The wonderful Mr John Mills is excellent as the submarine commander,posh,yes,they tended to be,but not precious.Never apart from here have I seen a propaganda film where the captain gets shirty with his crew,but you can be sure it happened and it's rather remarkable that in 1942 it should have been shown in cinemas throughout a besieged country. The interior scenes of the submarine in combat have a documentary feel that Asquith's elders and betters failed manifestly to capture. Yes,Mr Portman's northern accent is a bit dodgy at times and his mastery of several languages is never explained,but he typifies what was seen then as typical British "grit",not to say bloody mindedness. "We dive at dawn" deserves to be far better known and is a very good example of a thoughtful,well - made propaganda film.

The HMS Varangian is a British submarine that is currently in port, with many of the crew arguing over who gets shore leave and who has to man the tub in dock. However, all leave is cancelled whenever the Varangian is ordered to track and destroy German warship The Bardonberg. The journey to find it is dull and uneventful but the confrontation is tense and leaves the submarine struggling below the waves. Despite the moaning and complaining about the submarine life, desperate times call for desperate actions from ordinary men.Although this is a propaganda film in so much as it raises heroic pride among the audience, it is not so jingoistic and simplistic as to lose touch with reality. In this regard, the first half of the film is rather plodding in terms of action as it looks at the characters and the grind of life below the waves. The characters are not strong enough to make us care about their situations early on so it is weak in that aspect, but it is still interesting enough to watch and it is nice to see that they are not all typically "stiff upper lip" sorts. The picture of submarine life is not in that much detail (this is not Das Boot) but again at least the film is realistic in the portrayal of boredom, the risks and also the fact that the submarines were not run by computers and were far from being an exact science. The "battle" is short but still quite tense and the final fight for survival is enjoyable if rather simplistic and lacking anything beyond that of a standard war movie.The cast are mainly good; nobody really works that hard to produce "people" but they mostly avoid the clichés of the British stereotypes. Mills does have a stiff-upper-lip of course but he is also classless (as opposed to, say, the officers in In Which We Serve for example) and he is a likable character. Support is roundly good from people like Bradfield, Millar, Watling and others – it is only really in the final action sequence where the "heroic do-derring" aspect provides a few clunky moments but then those were to be expected and can be forgiven on the whole.Overall, an unspectacular movie perhaps but it manages to be quite enjoyable as a genre film while also avoiding the major problems that can too often come with a wartime propaganda film. People looking for out and out war action, or conversely for a real positive flag-waver will not be satisfied but mostly this does the business for a wet Saturday afternoon in.

It is always pleasant to see John Mills acting but the constraints of wartime mean this is not much more than a propaganda piece – plucky Brits pulling off a near impossible mission. The film quality is good but I had trouble hearing some of the dialog – British accents have changed a lot in 60 years - even for a native speaker.The underwater scenes where the crew is hunted by two German destroyers lacks the tension of later movies – in particular the superlative Das Boot. I was impressed by the calculations for torpedo firing, Mills trying to get angles and his officer working out trajectories on a slide rule. Funny to think they were still using such technology on the Apollo Missions. The special effects are lacking, although the "bathtub" scenes where Mills looks through the periscope are well done as are the real submarine scenes.The film lacks the pace and production values of later (and some earlier) war movies. It has the feeling more of docudrama.