A film that feels cobbled together from elements of previous Paramount hit films, particularly ones starring Alan Ladd: he's a war veteran in the third world (as in Calcutta); he's a pilot tight with members of his bomb crew (Calcutta, The Blue Dahlia); one of the flyers is terminally ill (You Came Along); there's a dodgy criminal (Morris Carnovsky), his henchman (Luis Van Rooten) and mysterious police chief (Luther Adler); Veronica Lake is co star (The Glass Key, The Blue Dahlia); Ladd is kind of in love with his best male friend and they also both love the same girl (The Glass Key).
Normally Ladd's co stars are William Bendix and Howard da Silva and John Farrow directs. Here his best friends are played by Wally Cassell and Douglas Dick and the director is Leslie Fenton. Actually everyone does a decent job - Cassell is no Bendix but is amiable and Dick is effective in the most sympathetic role (the terminally ill friend who falls for Lake. Ladd's performance is a solid star effort - the role fits him like a glove, a tough guys guy who has had his heart broken in the past.
The story is better than I remembered, or at least starts off that way: Ladd finds out that Dick is terminally ill and decides to show him a great time; to finance it they take an expensive job from Carnovsky and winds up flying from Shanghai to Saigon with Carnovsky's secretary, Lake, and a mysterious suitcase. Dick falls in love with Lake but she loves Ladd. So far so interesting, and the film throws in a mysterious French policeman (Adler).
Then the movie gets murky. Ladd discovers that Adler and Lake are smugglers, which should come as a shock to no one, especially Ladd who clearly took the job to make easy cash - it feels unfair he doesn't return the money to Carnovsky; he agreed to do a job, why not do it? Carnovsky stays out of the action far too long - he appears at the beginning and then at the end, and the movie lacks a villain for the in between bit. I kept expecting Adler to do this but he's actually a decent copper when the film needed someone more enigmatic (or another character). There's too much stuff of our characters chugging along down river chatting when another complication was needed (a former Nazi, another baddy).
Wally Cassell sees Lake and Ladd kiss but there's no dramatic pay off - then Cassell saves Ladd's life and dies, which is a downer. The final fight where Carnovsky fights Dick who is conveniently killed feels underwhelming. Dick never finds out that Ladd and Lake have fallen in love so there's no confrontation.
The movie feels chopped up a bit, the victim of rewriting and or editing/shooting. Carnovsky has this great entrance talking about how he's a coward and pays his employees well, then never does anything interesting again. It seems as though Ladd is going to con Van Rooyen to betray his boss but he never does.
So for the first half I was going 'hey this is pretty good' then it goes down hill.
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