Before there was film noir we all know and love there was "patriot noir" - you'd have the same tough talking bitter hero, black and white photography, shady night locations and femme fetale... only the hero would turn patriotic towards the end, dump the femme fetale and fall for a pure woman (whom he often didn't wind up with, usually due to self-sacrifice). They sort of form a bridge between gangster movies and film noir - Casablanca is the best known example, but Alan Ladd made a fair few, such as this entry.
He plays a truck driver in China just before Pearl Harbour who doesn't mind doing business with the Japs - he's tough talking, bitter, etc until basically nagged into patriotism by his co-driver (William Bendix as a dopey underling - not really friends with Ladd in this one) and an American raised in China (Loretta Young) who is transporting some girls who are "important to the future of China" (they're training to be teachers).
Director John Farrow and Young were noted Catholics are there's a bit of chat about Catholicism here; there's also an scene where Young extols the virtues of Chiang Kai Shek - apart from that the propaganda is less specific, being about "freedom" and "the little guy" standing up to the big bully. (There was no mention as far as I could tell about communists - the Chinese here all seem to be nationalists... though to be fair apart from Young's comment some of the troops they meet could work for Mao). While the Japanese are portrayed as buck teethed, glass-wearing rapists or vicious maniacs, the film is very sympathetic to Chinese, most of whom are played by actors with strong American accents.
The story is a little on the thin side - Ladd drives along a road, picks up Young and company, drives along some more road, has an adventure, a girl runs away, goes back to pick up the girl, finds she's been raped (a genuinely shocking moment, very well done), kills the rapists, turns patriotic, blows something up, then something up again. (It needed felt as though it another subplot or something).
Farrow's direction is excellent - the opening tracking shot of a Chinese city under attack is very well done as are the other action sequences. And the ending is a genuine surprise. Ladd's love scenes with Young have surprising warmth - he relaxes a bit, which is odd to see since normally his persona when it came to women was 'I don't care', but Young (who I've never been much of a fan of) seems to have gotten through to him.
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