This meticulous film re-enacts the first major sea battle of World War II, the dramatic engagement between the German pocket battleship "Graf Spee" and three smaller British cruisers off the coast of South America, and it's equally dramatic aftermath. When the battle-damaged Graf Spee steamed into the neutral Uruguayan port of Montevideo it became front page news all over the world, and everybody wondered how the story would end. Would the Graf Spee allow herself to be interned in Uraguay, would she attempt to escape out to sea, or would she fight the British again? And if she did choose to fight, just how powerful a force did the British have left to face her?
At the time the film was produced there were no longer any warships resembling the Graf Spee, so the producers made do with the U.S. Navy's heavy cruiser "USS Salem". The real Graf Spee was actually a great deal more powerful than the USS Salem. The Graf Spee could out-run any warship she didn't out-gun, and she out-gunned any warship she couldn't out-run. For those reasons the Graf Spee was more than a match for the three British warships that faced her. It was as though three terriers were taking on an angry bear.
One noteworthy aspect of this film is that the producers listed the ships in the credits as though they were members of the cast. It was entirely appropriate that they should have done so, since this is essentially a story of ships and the seamen who manned them. It is also noteworthy that two of the ships in the cast, HMS Cumberland and HMIS Delhi (formerly HMNZS Achilles) were actually present during the original events.
As for the original HMS Exeter, it was a tribute to the professionalism of her crew that she actually survived the tremendous battering depicted in the film (she was hit by seven of Graf Spee's 11-inch shells). Unfortunately she was sunk by the Japanese in 1942, and the survivors of her gallant crew spent the remainder of the war living under conditions similar to those depicted in "The Bridge Over the River Kwai".