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Sailor of the King (1953)

Rate: 5
Viewed: 1/25

SailorK
1/25: What a mistake the first fifteen minutes has been for Sailor of the King aka Single-Handed.

Because of the ending, my time is wasted by watching Richard Saville (Michael Rennie) trying to force a marriage upon Lucinda Bentley (Wendy Hiller) who wisely decided to reject him at the end of the day because, simply put, they had only met for hours. So, I'm forced to think this would play a big role down the road only that it never did.

Years pass. Now, there's a new war going on, and Saville lusts for some battle action to do some good despite the ship running out of fuel. He ignores the reality of that and goes straight for a German raider and gets what he wants with no thought for the safety of his men.

At the same time, Andrew Brown, played by the mostly shirtless Jeffrey Hunter, wishes to be a hero for the day and does the stupid by escaping the raider to be on the rocks and picking off the Germans with two different rifles (obviously a mistake because he was shown taking one) but is ultimately done in by the sun while having little water and no food on hand. If I were him, I wouldn't have bothered with the bright-colored raft that's conveniently left on the raider. The Germans can spot it easily while working on the repairs.

As all of this were happening, I thought of several things. Why not the Germans keep shooting at the rocks? If their ammunition is running low at that point or they need to preserve it, okay...fine. Then, why not pick up the anchor and move away from the spot to let the men get up and go inside? After that, they can go back in but this time turn the ship around to resume with the repairs before setting out to the ocean. What does it matter if the guy is still out there? He'll die anyway. Earlier, it's stupid of the Germans to leave the two prisoners unshackled and free to roam around.

Back to the ending, had Saville found out that Brown was his son after all, that would've completed the connection to the beginning. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, the filmmakers did nothing about it while deciding to have an alternate ending with Brown dead and his mother attending the posthumous ceremony (which is more realistic because there's absolutely no way that Brown would've survived the anti-aircraft shellacking) with zero acknowledgment that it's Saville's kid. Therefore, the first fifteen minutes shouldn't have been included. Is it because Saville and Bentley had a one-night stand which resulted in a bastard by the name of Andrew just to satisfy British morals of the day?

All in all, Sailor of the King is a prime example of how failing to make a connection between the beginning and the ending can wreck a film.