Lifeboat's yarn is a devilishly simple one. The setting is World War II, take a bunch of American survivors adrift in the middle of the ocean after being torpedoed, then add to their number the Nazi responsible, and you've got the basic ingredients for a tense and absorbing thriller. Theory and practice don't quite come together as one here though, and the last of Hitchcock's trio of media-at-war features filmed and set during the period (following Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur) is something of a noble failure. The film, set entirely on a lifeboat, was beset with problems during filming. Most of the cast fell ill at one point or another, likely as a ...  Read the complete review