The film tells an episode of the Battle of the Atlantic, when the Italian submarine Comandante Cappellini sunk the Belgian ship Kabalo, and Cappellini's commander Salvatore Todaro decided to disobey orders and to rescue the Kabalo's crew, being forced to navigate on the surface for three days, making the ship an easy target for enemies.[3][4]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 27% of 11 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4/10.[8]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 43 out of 100, based on six critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[9]