In honor of Memorial Day (and because my old man served in the Navy), what are your favorite movies set mostly or partly aboard US Navy ships? I expect most will be WWII movies, but if you can find any about John Paul Jones, bring 'em on!
I will start off with Mister Roberts.
The Hunt for Red October!
Quality movie - The Caine Mutiny
Guilty pleasure - Steven Seagal’s Under Siege
Quality movie - Up Periscope!
Guilty pleasure - Down Periscope!
An under-appreciated gem is The Final Countdown. It’s a WWII time-travel what-if, but none the worse for that,
The Enemy Below, U-571
American Warships, the mockbuster released by Asylum Pictures to try to ride the coat-tails of Battleship and is much better than Battleship.
Flight of the Intruder
In Harm’s Way - John Wayne & Patricia Neal & Kirk Douglas
Much better than average - IMDB rated it at 7.3
Enjoy!
Mr. Roberts (1955) Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell IMDB rated at 7.9
Captain Phillips (2013) Tom Hanks IMDB rated 8.0
This is one of my most favorite movies. I’m not sure why. But I just really enjoyed it.
3) Run Silent Run Deep (1958) - rated 7.4 - Clark Gable & Burt Lancaster
Oops. Sorry. The Enema Below is a dupe.
The Philadelphia Experiment.
Star Trek IV, (partly set on board the nuclear wessel Enterprise).
The Sand Pebbles is set aboard the USS San Pablo.
Robert Stack as John Paul Jones.
Cliff Robertson as The Man Without a Country.
As the chap above in post three points out, The Caine Mutiny springs to mind. Humphrey Bogart gave an iconic, atypical performance as a man who had cracked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIKQkJz-C5k
Veeringly slightly off-topic, I’d cite Silent Running, the (very much of its time) 1972 enviro-sci-fi film. It’s not really set on a US Navy ship - they seemed to be private vessels owned by American Airlines - but it was filmed on board the USS Valley Forge, a US aircraft carrier that was about to be scrapped. The film had a low budget and this was a neat way of getting detailed, plausible-looking sets without spending a fortune, e.g. the shot at the top here:
http://www.scifimoviezone.com/silentrunning01.shtml
As a consequence it has some of the dark and grimy look of Alien several years before Alien came out.
I thought The Hunt for Red October took place on a Russian sub.
Didn’t it?
And the USS Dallas a Los Angeles class US submarine.
They Were Expendable - If you want to include boats.
Top Gun
Crimson Tide, another modern submarine movie contemporary with Hunt for Red October. (made 5 years apart)
WW2 vintage: Operation Petticoat
None of these can be streamed on Netflix. Not Run Silent, either. What does Netflix have against sub flicks?
Grey Lady Down
The Bedford Incident