Compact, well-paced, and easy on the eyes (as well as the brain), this is a worthy example of the "second features" coming out of Hollywood in the early to mid 1950s. It knows its place on the bottom half of a double-bill and has no pretensions to rise above its status.
The story line about the brothers-turned-rivals is satisfyingly predictable and intermixed with it is footage of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, back in the days when it was all-male and all-white. There's also a bit of aerial footage as the two brothers move from Annapolis to Pensacola to Corpus Christi and finally to Korea. There's even a street-scene shot of Tokyo in the post-war era.
John Derek, Diana Lynn, and Kevin McCarthy make an attractive threesome -- particularly in that glorious Technicolor of the era -- but despite all the obvious opportunities for shower-room and locker-room scenes at the Academy, there's very little beefcake. So much testosterone, so little skin! There is, however, a brief scene of a swimsuit-clad Diana Lynn and John Derek running out of the ocean and onto a beach, so we do get a glimpse of Derek's bare chest just about a year before it was caressed by Vincent Price's whip in 1956's "The Ten Commandments." Alvy Moore supplies the comic relief. (Does anyone "buy" him as a naval cadet?)
