Columbia Pictures' Destroyer is essentially the kind of morale-building action movie that Warner Bros. did more often during World War II. The story here is tailored to the somewhat long-of-toothEdward G. Robinson -- whose acting career went back to the early teens -- and is built around the age of his protagonist, a well-intentioned former career Navy man who may be too old for the job he desperately wants to do. His antagonist is a young, lanky Glenn Ford, a leader in a new generation of sailors who feel they don't have much to learn from old birds like Robinson's "Boley" Boleslavski. And therein hangs most of the plot, and a good one it is in the hands of this cast -- Marguerite Chapman plays Robinson's daughter with charm and fire, attracting the attention of Ford's young CPO and adding fuel to the fire between him and her father; Edgar Buchanan, playing older than he is, is fine as an old salt who is just as anxious to get in on the fighting as Robinson; and Leo Gorcey, taking a break from his East Side Kids movies, turns in a surprisingly good performaance as a young punk of a seaman. Director William Seiter moves the action fast enough to please war movie fans, and Chapman is attractive when she's on screen, while Robinson and Ford generate lots of sparks in their scenes -- and the payoff is a terrifically exciting duel-to-the-death between Robinson's destroyer and a Japanese submarine, each racing against the clock for a chance to kill the other off.