REGENT THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 80, 28 December 1940, Page 12

REGENT THEATRE

Those who see “Convoy,” in the second week of a popular season at the Regent Theatre, will need no reminding that there is real humour and real excitement about the way “the other fellow” does his job—especially when the job is that of the Royal Navy and Mercantile Marine. “Convoy,” though it is a fiction film, is based on day by day happenings of the war at sea. It serves the double purpose of bringing home to landlubbers the fact that their safety depends in large measure on the courage of the men at sea, and of providing magnificent entertainment. When the story opens the cruiser Apollo is returning from a successful action against a German submarine, and everyone on board is eagerly awaiting the expected award of shore-leave. Both officers and crew express their views—and their expectations—about this with some vigour and a great deal of humour. But it is not that way with the Navy in wartime; the Apollo is ordered to assist in convoy work at once, and does so, though not without a good deal of hearty grousing on the part of the mt it. Just before she sails, the new lieutenant (John Clements) comes aboard, and the social temperature drops sharply because everyone remembers that he was the man responsible for the captain's unhappy divorce a few years ago. But the lieutenant is irrepressible, and before the story ends the quarrel is reconciled and he stands high in the estimation of all who knew him. The love interest, heightened by the fact that the woman concerned is a refugee in one of Che ships of the convoy, is woven neatly in and out of the story till the happy ending, but never does it more than add a touch of domestic tension to the main theme of the Navy men and their colleagues of the Mercantile Marine. A merchant skipper, so independent' and. so courageous that no one can help identifying him with "Potato” Jones, who consistently ran the Spanish blockade a few years ago, lends contrast to the orderliness and relentless zeal of the Navy men. and somehow adds to fne stature of both in doing so.