Hong Kong

If you are fond of the Paramount adventures movies, and there are plenty of them, directed by the likes of Lewis Foster, Edward Ludwig, Jerry Hopper...this one is realy a waste. Ok, there is the atmosphere and the presence of the glamorous, gorgeous Rhonda Fleming, but the story is so lame and predictable. This is the worst of Lewis Foster for me, concerning his adventures yarns. His best was CROSSWINDS, but this one.... It deserves to be watched for a movie buff searching gems from the fifties. So, if you try it, please do it only for the atmosphere. It remains a good time waster. Paramount Pictures usually provided good stuff.

I like this one. Ronald Reagan, who helped tear down the Berlin wall in real life, battles communism in Asia with this film, although the viewer might not realize that's part of what this film is about. It isn't full of rhetoric, but instead is full of drama. Mostly the film is about an orphaned Chinese boy in the care of an American, Jeff Williams (Reagan). Williams struggles with greed versus human compassion. It is a good human drama with some romance also between the Reagan character and the lovely Victoria Evans played by Rhonda Fleming who did a wonderful job. There is some action in the movie to boot. The little orphan in the movie is adorable for lack of a more macho word from a manly man such as myself. LOL.

My best memory of this film is when Ronald Reagan's character walks into a Chinese refugee camp and asks a Chinese gentleman "what kind of clambake is this"? Very sensitive and thoughtful stuff. They showed Reagan films on tv quite a bit back when he was first elected president, then they started to disappear. With the passing of the great communicator, perhaps they will reappear, but I would bet against it. I don't recall much else about this eminently forgettable film with the exception of the quoted line, but I do recall it being pretty much total dreck, and Reagan giving his normal b-minus level performance. It's tough to actually write ten lines about this film, but I'm trying my best!

Ronald Reagan has a heart of gold; isn't that swell? In Hong Kong, he plays a thief sent to rob a Chinese boy of a valuable artifact, only to soften up and join forces with his guardian from the orphanage, Rhonda Fleming. He tries to come off as Mr. Smooth at first, but Rhonda doesn't fall for it. Her first priority is always to protect the children, so as she and her charge travel through Hong Kong, Ronnie has to tag along and pretend to be an ally instead of a crook.

If you guess that somewhere along the way, his pretending turns to genuine caring, you're probably a very smart person. Or you've just seen a lot of B-pictures. No offense to the two leads, but they both specialized in B-pictures, so it's a cinch that the four they made together weren't going to win any Oscars. I'm always up for some eye candy, but even I wouldn't recommend this one. It's predictable and neither well written nor believable.

Not a great film in its own right but it certainly was responsible for a later greater franchise of films starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark. A brief checklist proves the point: fedora and leather jacket wearing hero that is a good, all action guy but sometimes strays into morally grey areas? Check. His name is Jeff Williams but his love interest comes from Indiana, so substitute another Welsh name for his surname and add a bit of geography and we have Indiana Jones. An orphaned oriental boy as his sidekick? Check. A feisty heroine and romantic interest that joins him on his adventures? Check. Dastardly foreign villains? Check. A sought after golden statuette? Check. A plane running out of fuel that is forced to 'crash' land? Check. Actually this is a fun little film and largely because of noting all these influences and Director/co-writer Lewis R Foster was no slouch having directed a number of early, classic shorts starring Laurel and Hardy. Ronald Reagan and Rhonda Fleming in the leads are both likeable and have decent chemistry together and Nigel Bruce and Mary Somerville, as an older upper crust couple and Claud Allister as a beleaguered Hotel manager, all add moments of welcome, gentle comedy. As it is set in Hong Kong, we would expect to see a number of Asian actors in prominent roles but that is not really the case. Danny Chang is the moppet, Wei Lin who adds heart to the story and Marvin Miller is a suitably oily Eastern bad guy. But the stakes never feel particularly high and it relies too much on obviously stock footage. That said, it passes an hour and a half of time agreeably enough.