Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: John Steinbeck, Jo Swerling & Ben Hecht (uncredited)
Based on a story idea by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson
Producers: Alfred Hitchcock & Kenneth Macgowan
Country: USA
Running Time: 98 min
Year: 1944
BBFC Certificate: U
(4.5/5)When I was first getting into films as a young teenager, Lifeboat was always one of my ‘go to’ titles when I wanted to impress people with my knowledge and appreciation of film. Back then I only tended to watch the Casablancas and Gone With the Winds of the film world, I rarely ventured beyond ‘the canon’, so I felt like I was unlocking some hidden gem when I discovered the relatively unappreciated Lifeboat. I can remember liking the film a lot and for the decade or two that followed I’ve always brought it up in Hitchcock conversations as his ‘underrated classic’. Of course it’s not actually the most rare of films, but it does tend to get pushed aside in favour of titles like Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo. These and many other of Hitchcock’s bonafide classics are rightly worthy of their status, but I always felt this needed a little more recognition. Well, I haven’t actually seen the film since those early days, until the fine people at Eureka offered me the chance to review their meticulously restored Masters of Cinema edition. Of course I jumped at the chance and have finally settled down with the film that had stuck with me for over half of my life, so what do I think of it now?
For those of you that haven’t heard of Lifeboat, it’s a film that Hitchcock produced for 20th Century Fox during the Second World War in the first few years of his move to the USA. With David O. Selznick leaving producing duties to help with the war effort, Hitchcock saw his chance to make a picture on his own terms, so he came up with the story behind Lifeboat. This idea was then brought to John Steinbeck to produce a script, which was later adapted by Jo Swerling & Ben Hecht (uncredited). The film is about the rag-tag group of survivors of a ship torpedoed by the Germans during the war and how they cope together on a lifeboat as it drifts across the ocean, hopefully towards rescue. The waters are further muddied however by the arrival of one last survivor, a German from aboard the very submarine that put them in this situation.
Nobody takes the war more seriously than P.K. Sullivan (Gage Munroe with his afore-mentioned Beiber do) facies himself General George S. Patton; albeit he is young enough that loyalty is not valued as much as a collection of soldiers to throw under the bus for whatever plan he has to win-at-all-costs. Nevertheless, as the alpha-male of his team, he remains in charge. The other team, headed up by equally blonde, Quinn, has some leadership issues, and the only girl in the game which adds some pre-teen sexual tension to the equation. Mackenzie Munroe, who looks like a very young Emma Stone is really quite magnificent and has real screen presence (some of the other supporting kid actors are a bit more dodgey in their acting) sporting a brain and a crossbow and A-cups (and is not afraid to use either or all of them.) Let us be clear, while this film wears the clothing of war and adventure in the woods, it is equally interested in being a crucible for all of the kids to work out their issues and anxieties while waiting for the next battle. But war is 10% violence and 90% waiting, so there are plenty of opportunities to talk about religion, philosophy (albeit at a youth level) and what species of dog would you allow to give you a blow-job if you were rewarded with riches and fame. Yes, these 12 year olds drop F-bombs often, and when provoked can be total assholes to each other. War is war. 
Roger Brown by day is a corporate headhunter looking for a new CEO of GPS technology conglomerate Pathfinder. His interviews with candidates involve a speech about the power of a solid reputation. Small talk veers towards cultural tastes, specifically art, and whether or not they like or own dogs. It is all neat and efficient, even if Roger lays the process out with the smug condescending tone of one in power in a corporate situation. But there is an alternate purpose, while these would-be CEOs are at the arranged interview with Pathfinder Roger dons a courier uniform and robs them of the very valuable paintings they indicated to him. With the help of a home security installer (with a weakness for guns and Russian prostitutes), and an art forger who is efficient enough at making replacement substitutes that would make Elmyr de Hory proud, Roger has a lucrative second income. An income he dumps into his lavish modernist home, impulsive jewelry purchases and start-up capital for his tall, blonde and intelligent wife Diane’s nascent art gallery. In a coincidence that should raise eyebrows, a friend of Diane, and the former CEO of another GPS firm, Clas, comes to Roger looking for the Pathfinder position and is in possession of a Peter Paul Rubens’ acrylic valued at $100 million dollars. This sets Roger in action for the biggest score of his cat burglar career until everything goes completely wrong. At one point the slick corporate operator is up to his eyeballs in shit – literally. 
Now one might criticize a movie denigrating 21st century America for its loss of empathy, dignity and kindness, by making a film a vulgar and facile – shooting fish (or babies) in a barrel – as 
