A fantastic cast gets caught up with a pretentious drama/adventure that is more sleep inducing than a day long power outage. For a film with excellent Oscar nominated music, photography and sets, what is wrong with it? Well, considering that it's the story that really grabs the viewer and refuses to let go, I'd have to say the plot that in spite of being filled with nonstop action is simple just pretentious, unbelievable and deathly boring.
A great cast does what they can with this story of conflict between the British military and native tribes, another case of "uh oh, there goes the neighborhood!" of those do-gooder Englishmen trying to control every piece of soil they land on. Bruce Caboy and George Sanders lead the white men in conflict with the natives, told in a curse that among the six men there, one will die. The issue is that there's only five of them (including the Italian cook p.o.w. Joseph Calleia), that is until the great white hunter, Harry Carey, shows up. Reginald Gardiner and Carl Edmond are the other two.
Then there's the exotic looking Gene Tierney, playing a half Arab/half French princess like outcast, speaking perfect English and involved in the knowledge that one of the European men is a traitor. While this gets going a bit with the occasional attack on the fort and provides a few shocks here and there, it's overflowing with absurd situations, such as Tierney's being caught in a non-stop machine gun fire, and ending up with barely a scratch.
This looks great in its advertising, but quickly looses its grip thanks to frequent pacing issues and ridiculous melodramatic events. Plus, it's hard to root for the British considering that they are obviously the intruders. Well intended art becomes something you'd walk by in the Museum of Modern Art and be instantly perplexed by what it's all about. A sudden religious twist at the end triples the absurdity with an out of the blue cameo by Sir Cedric Hardwicke.
A great cast does what they can with this story of conflict between the British military and native tribes, another case of "uh oh, there goes the neighborhood!" of those do-gooder Englishmen trying to control every piece of soil they land on. Bruce Caboy and George Sanders lead the white men in conflict with the natives, told in a curse that among the six men there, one will die. The issue is that there's only five of them (including the Italian cook p.o.w. Joseph Calleia), that is until the great white hunter, Harry Carey, shows up. Reginald Gardiner and Carl Edmond are the other two.
Then there's the exotic looking Gene Tierney, playing a half Arab/half French princess like outcast, speaking perfect English and involved in the knowledge that one of the European men is a traitor. While this gets going a bit with the occasional attack on the fort and provides a few shocks here and there, it's overflowing with absurd situations, such as Tierney's being caught in a non-stop machine gun fire, and ending up with barely a scratch.
This looks great in its advertising, but quickly looses its grip thanks to frequent pacing issues and ridiculous melodramatic events. Plus, it's hard to root for the British considering that they are obviously the intruders. Well intended art becomes something you'd walk by in the Museum of Modern Art and be instantly perplexed by what it's all about. A sudden religious twist at the end triples the absurdity with an out of the blue cameo by Sir Cedric Hardwicke.