The reviews are unanimously favourable. Most critics take the film for what it is, wartime propaganda, and find it unusually well made: a direct, forceful script, strong camerawork and a story that moves briskly from one encounter to the next as six U-boat survivors cross Canada. The acting draws the most consistent praise, with Eric Portman’s Nazi leader singled out, and several critics note that the characters on both sides of the divide are more rounded than the job required.
The reservations are mild and cluster around age. Time Out finds the propaganda-driven characterisations dated, and Slant Magazine calls the film narrower and less playful than Powell and Pressburger’s later work, while praising the compassion shown to a Nazi who begins to doubt his cause. The spread is narrow. The wartime notices from Sight and Sound and The New York Times are the warmest; the later reviews settle at good rather than remarkable, and Little White Lies thinks the film under-appreciated.