That was an excellent one.

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"We Dive at Dawn" is a good, war-time action movie: heroic but no so jingoistic to be unpalatable to modern audiences. The fictional Royal Navy submarine 'Sea Tiger' goes to sea after the 'Brandenburg', a fictional German battleship. The first third of the movie, which is mostly 'home-front' scenes following the crew as they go on leave then find their leave cancelled is a bit slow, but the movie picks up when the 'Sea Tiger' leaves on the hunt. When the pray is sighted, the movie slides into the classic 'cat and mouse' game between the submarine and the battleship and its escorting destroyers. The stalking of the 'Brandenburg' is very well done as are the scenes of misleading and evading the destroyers. After the skirmish and short on fuel, the submarine heads for a Danish port to steal some diesel, a 'commando' segment that I found much less interesting than the scenes at sea. Likely due to its mid-war filming, the movies suffers a bit in realism (e.g. the German soldiers seem to be using British machine guns). I was intrigued to find out that there really were radio-equipped 'rescue floats' that had been dropped into the channel by the Germans for the use of downed Luftwaffe aircrew. The fact that the Sea Tiger encounters one of these floats that happens to be occupied by three Germans (one of whom knows a key fact about the Brandenburg's sailing) who are then taken prisoner seems a bit of a stretch. Given the cramped conditions of a WW2 submarine, I can't imagine that there would be much room for prisoners but, even at the height of the Battle for the Atlantic and a year after the Blitz, I doubt British audiences would have accepted the likely outcome of such an encounter in real life (i.e. the Germans know too much to be left on the float but taking them prisoner is not feasible, so...). Overall: a worthy entry into the "submarine movie" genre and a good example of British war-time movies.

Any film about WWII made during WWII by a British production company has no latter-day peer in my opinion, respectfully. The confluence of so many things near and dear to my heart are in At Dawn We Dive: as a descendant of Admiral Horatio Nelson and student of all aspects of World War Two and particularly naval warfare, I favor depictions of subs and action in the North Atlantic and especially those which include the German side of things. For those unacquainted with target priorities, an attack on an enemy warship is the greatest event that a submarine can hope to encounter and such a rare opportunity would develop surprisingly similarly to what we see here. The pacing is deliberate and typical of the works coming out of the Ealing, Rank and British-Gaumont studios back in the day: frankly I prefer its quieter, more cerebral approach for its humanity and realism that engages far better than any over-produced Hollywood movie ever could. This reminds me of Powell and Pressburger's The 49th Parallel thanks to the powerfully persuasive Eric Portman, a favorite of mine. John Mills receives second billing and a smaller font in the titles, so this is clearly meant to be Mr. Portman's film but the whole cast shines. As for the title sequence, am I the only one who is utterly charmed by Gainsborough Production's lovely pre-CGI Gainsborough Girl?

I very much agree with the comment about the verisimilitude of the control room dialogue and action during the torpedo shoot. However, the scenes that really struck me most forcibly as realistic were those in the engine room during the episode where the Baltic A/S net was penetrated. The mechanician operating the electric motor was (in my opinion!) definitely not an actor - he was a matelot doing his regular job, and he was obviously jolly proud of it too. The repetition of these "ahead/astern" scenes suggests that the director was as fascinated as I was. The film is and will remain well worth watching for scenes like these. And for our US friends who find the dialogue difficult - well, I often use the subtitles option when watching modern Hollywood action films, like "Get Shorty". Doesn't stop my enjoyment, and I can then understand about 90% on a second unaided viewing!

***************************MILD SPOILERS AHEAD**************************We Dive at Dawn is an English made movie with John Mills in the lead role. The second time I watched the DVD version was on a big screen TV and I must say the movie is better than I thought the first time I saw it on the samll screen. May be it was the big screen viewing that helped?I still say the first few segments of the movie are muddled, but once the submarine leaves the dock and begins its mission, the movie takes off too! The search for the German battleship named the Brandenburg and the adventures which went along with it were absorbing and the detail shown in the movie are interesting!I'm increasing my rating to 7/10. If you enjoy WW II films, I think you'll find this one interesting once the submarine gets underway. Some of the men on the sub have quite a sense of humor, too!