The story is fiction but the war was very real when this movie was made. While not intended to be a comedy, it has it's moments of humor. I heard it said this was to be a British movie but was switched to Hollywood because Britian was in deep straits and under attack at the time. Whatever the reason, it plays pretty well except for the old US 4 piper destroyer sinking a modern Japanese battleship (not a Japanese destroyer) . Not very likely, but that's Hollywood for you. However, the acting by Charles Laughton is classic. He does indeed steal every scene he's in and that takes some doing when one of the other actors is Walter Brennan. Laughton's John Paul Jones speech to the ship's company is superb and stirring even 60 years later.
-BullMoose
-BullMoose