The war film was perhaps the most sure-fire genre in British cinema of the 50s, matched only by comedies. Most of their emphasis was on World War Two but occasionally filmmakers would vary things by getting Imperial - this is an early depiction (the first?) of the Malayan Emergency.
Jack Hawkins glowers a lot as a planter whose plantation is under communist attack. While there is some support down the road - the local military man is Anthony Steel - he has to do a lot himself: there are sandbags on the front porch, little kids have grenades (an effective moment), the car he drives to town in has armour, he keeps his gun handy.
Hawkins is ideal as a man of action. Problem is, he isn't given enough action to do - there's an awful lot of scenes where servants are making him cups of tea or serving him dinner. He is mostly tense and worries. Part of the problem is there's a big subplot involving Claudette Colbert as Hawkins' wife - he wants her to go home with their kid, which is understandable, but she doesn't and they squabble. They needed to be ambushed more.
Claudette isn't very convincing as a planter's wife (she's meant to have been there for ages - they talk about living in a Japanese POW camp), she has poor chemistry with Hawkins, and just feels all wrong. I know why Colbert was cast, they wanted a name, and Colbert has charisma and can act - she still feels wrong. In her defence it's not much of a part. There's a scene where Steel has tea with her and I hoped maybe for a plot where these two had an affair or some flirting but they don't go there (Steel's part isn't very good). There is some fun to be had at the sight of Claudette Colbert being approached by a communist guerrilla wielding a machete, shooting him dead and then fainting; she also blasts away with a machine gun at the end through sand bags. That's fun.
The British presence in Malaya and the politics of the Emergency aren't really explored. There are two nice Asian characters who meet deaths at the hands of the nasty baddies (no leading Europeans are killed). The one decent sized Asian character part allowed to survive is a young boy, a white actor browned up, who plays a friend of the Hawkins-Colbert union.
The action is handled well enough - better than the domestic scenes. Location shooting helps (even if the actual location was Ceylon). And the sheer novelty of it gets this over the line.
It was a hit at the box office, in Britain at least.
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