A wonderfully improbable little comedy-drama which of all Hawks' silent Elms has sustained more than marginal interest. It switches midway from a genial, hyperbolic comedy to muted drama; an exhilarating story about two sailors who love to fight changes to a precise study of a three cornered relationship, with the Hawksian heroine bringing a challenge to the original male bonding.

The film is so precisely designed, developed and controlled that if one didn't know that Hawks later mastered the sound film, one might resent the coming of sound just when Hawks had mastered the techniques of the silent film.