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As highlighted above, that made a fabulous anti-communist film starring John Wayne, and is based upon A.S. Feischman’s book “The Brave Engineer,” was the first of many planned movies under John Wayne Batjac Productions, after splitting from Robert M. Fellows. When it was pitched, the working title was “The Challenge.” A version that John Wayne endorsed. By then Robert Mitchum was meant to do it but quarrels with the film’s William A Wellman soon leading to him offering to either quit or get Mitchum fired. To avoid a mess with the producer who happened to be in a honeymoon, Wayne decided to make a sacrifice Mike was doing while he was replacing Mitchum, which was indeed horrible. This was the main issue that got to Wellman to a whole new level of agony; that was when Mitchum threw the location manager for the film into the water. Turns out Wayne was pressured to take this jaw droppingly low class role when he already did a considerable amount of acting, which he got blamed for. Like I said, the other way around was even worse! This was not powerful at all and was at times painful to witness Wayne trying to comply with such ridiculous and unbelievable writing.
Merchant marine captain Tom Wilder (John Wayne) is going a little insane rotting in a Chinese concentration camp with the only comfort in his life being accompanied by a person he calls “Baby” in his head. But when a man, Big Han (Mike Mazurki) helps him escape the camp while disguised in a Russian outfit, everything changes. Wilder gets taken by boat to a nearby village, Chiku Shan. Here, he meets the village elder Mr. Tao (Paul Fix) and Cathy Grainger (Lauren Bacall), an American woman whose father serves as a doctor, and is unofficially working for the Chinese government. They had organized the escape attempt so that Wilder could help pilot an old, rusty ferryboat with the 180 village residents inside and escape from the village he was in. Wilder is surprised at the arrangements as he would be required to navigate the 300 miles down the harsh waters of the Formosa Strait without a map in a boat he is only capable of going eight knots in, Being chased by commie gunnerships only to have the water tear his boat to pieces and so why wouldn’t the Captain want to fight the challenge. As expected, this makes the task him and the villagers need to pull off and the challenges itself overcome seem far more easier than they should.
It also means having a pro-communist family come along so that their kids are not shot alongside them for letting the boat get away. Inserted as The Red is Berry Kroeger, who is depicted as an obese and disgusting person who tries to scheme the murder of the Captain. All the anti-communists villagers are such good people and they are revering to their white savior.
The production values were handsomely done filming was done mostly on the northern california coast but the outcome is just a routine action film. There was no Paul Fix, Berry Kroeger, and Anita Ekberg were never very convincing as Asians, while the now mandatory romance between Wayne and Bacall lacked the essential heat.
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