The Lightship on AllMovie

Jerzy Skolimowski directed this allegorical drama taking place in 1955 aboard an anchored U.S. Coast Guard ship that serves as a lighthouse, preventing vessels from crashing into the rocks on the Virginia shore line. The lightship commander, Captain Miller (Klaus Maria Brandauer), is a German-born American who is haunted by a terrible experience from World War II. As a commander of a destroyer, he chose to chase after a German U-boat rather than pick up victims from the sea. Miller lives on the lightship with his troubled teenage son Alex (Michael Lyndon) and a tiny crew. When Miller spots a wrecked speedboat, he rescues the victims and brings them aboard the lightship. Unfortunately for Miller, the survivors are an unsavory lot -- a distasteful homosexual psychopath named Caspary (Robert Duvall) and his two low-life brothers, Gene (William Forsythe) and Eddie (Arliss Howard). Once aboard the lighthouse, the trio try to compel Miller to take them to their destination, but Miller resists, refusing to abandon the Virginia coast.