TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

utgard14 A middle-of-the-road submarine picture starring John Wayne that unfortunately didn't appeal much to me. First, I'm not a huge fan of Patricia Neal. I know, I know. She was a fine actress and I respect her. But as leading ladies go, she leaves me cold. Second, this is full of clichés and stereotypical plot lines, even for 1951. I'm not huge on war movies in general. Oh it's not some philosophical thing. I actually like a lot of the WW2-era war movies. But many of the ones made from the '50s onward, like this one, feel like programmers to me. There are exceptions, of course, and I praise those movies when I see them. But, for the most part, these types of movies are predictable and dull. There's an audience for this picture that will like it a lot but unfortunately I didn't.

ma-cortes Good warfare movie well starred by John Wayne as Duke E Gifford , a sub-officer during the Pacific campaign and in the Pearl Harbor zone who surveys the area and diving under water . The film starts with a foreword : ¨When the Pacific Fleet was destroyed by the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor , it remained for the submarines to carry the war to the enemy. In the four years that followed our undersea craft sank six million tons of Japanese shipping including some of the proudest ships pf the ImperiaL Navy. Fifty-two of our submarines and thirty-five hundred officers and men were lost. It is to these men and the entire silent service that this picture is humbly dedicated ¨. At the beginning Wayne and crew rescue nuns and children from a Pacific island . Later on , in Pearl Harbor is developed a loving triangle between Wayne, Patricia Neal and Philip Carey . After that, the submarine commanded by Ward Bond and John Wayne attacks freighters and cruisers, executing on varied activities as interception and rescue . But in attack on freighters, torpedoes fired at ideal angle hit target failed to explode as the torpedoes lead a hit right under the stack and nothing happens.The movie contains warlike action with battles well assembled , thrills, emotion and a love story. Passable special effects by F . Koenekamp though with various scale models and some stock-footage. Acceptable production design and enough budget by Warner Bros , and very superior compared with those at John Wayne 's habitual studio such as Republic or Poverty Row , as Wayne played several more for them . As technical adviser appears Vice-Admiral Charles Lockwood who was commandant of American subs in Pacific. With John Ford's usual players as Ward Bond, Jack Pennick and of course the great Wayne and brief secondary roles for William Campbell and Martin Milner. It's a cool realization with roaring battle scenes and full of emotion , suspense and romance. This large-scale picture is professionally directed by George Waggner and it packs a splendid score by the classic Max Steiner and appropriate cinematography by Bert Glennon . The film is dedicated to the men who lost their lives in submarines and to the United States Navy for its aid and cooperation in making this picture possible, our grateful thanks.

Jay Raskin I haven't seen many John Wayne war movies, but I do not imagine there are many worse than this one. There are three five-minute action sequences which are interesting, but not spectacular. The rest of the movie is filled with a lifeless romance between 44 year old John Wayne and 25 year old Patricia Neal (she looks like his daughter)and a weird subplot about fixing broken torpedoes. The movie seems fixated on babies and fathers. At the beginning the submarine saves a couple of nuns, a group of school children and a baby from the evil Japanese. Later we find out that Wayne and Neal have divorced because their baby died and Wayne was too busy with his Navy work to ever see it. So Wayne is dad in these two cases, but not really. Wayne's commanding officer is called "Pops" (Ward Bond). When he dies, Wayne takes over the roll. So he becomes a father figure for the third time in the film. The babies are all the sailors under his command, including baby-faced Martin Milner. Besides the strange baby motif, the anti-Asian racism of the film is also bothersome. The submarine basically is doing sneak attacks against Japanese ships throughout the movie. Not once do they even attempt to pick up any Japanese to take prisoner after they sink their boats. In fact we never see any Japanese when the submarine does it sneak attacks. All we see are ships burning, blowing up and sinking. We are not permitted to see human beings dying as a result of these actions. On the other hand, whenever we do see Japanese, they are launching sneak attacks against Americans. Only after the Japanese launch their sneak attacks do we ever see Japanese dying. This racist coding of death makes it appear that only two kinds of death happened in the war: American deaths caused by evil Japanese doing sneak attacks and Japanese deaths caused by good Americans in self-defense response for their attacks. So, if you like war movies with little action, bad direction and poor writing, "Take her down."

rbverhoef A John Wayne film should be a western directed by John Ford or Howard Hawks, otherwise it should not even be made. 'Operation Pacific' is one of the examples of what you get when it does star John Wayne, but it is not a western and definitely not directed by one of the two great directors I named above. This is a clichéd film, and since it is about a submarine in WW-II it contains even more clichés since a story set in that time and place can only go in a few directions.John Wayne is Duke Gifford, an officer and hero on submarine Thunderfish. The film starts with the rescue of a couple of babies and two nuns. Once they are on board of the submarine I started laughing. While under attack the children are running around and no one gets mad. I thought of the greatest of submarine-films, 'Das Boot', and what would have happened there. After this we get to meet Mary Stuart (Patricia Neal), the love interest on shore. Then we go back to the submarine and we get some more of the usual stuff.Most things are really close to annoying in this film. Especially the patriotism and heroic acts are things you expect, but you hope that they never come. Maybe I should not compare a film like this with 'Das Boot' but they could have a done a lot better at least by trying to get things a little right. The scenes on shore are not much better. There is another man in the life of Mary Stuart but we all know how that story ends. Another scene gets the men of the Thunderfish in trouble with the military police. The way John Wayne saves them from that situation is pretty close to stupid.I have to say one positive thing. The film looks pretty good, considering the time it was made. Maybe the combat scenes are clichéd and predictable, on a technical level they succeed. Whether they are possible the way we see them is another question. (The images are almost saying you can't lose a war as long as you have a submarine.) Still, in the end this is nothing more than a typical bad John Wayne film.