{"id":5731,"date":"2024-10-12T06:35:58","date_gmt":"2024-10-12T06:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=5731"},"modified":"2024-10-12T20:00:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T20:00:57","slug":"high-road-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/12\/high-road-to-china\/","title":{"rendered":"High Road to China"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"High Road to China<\/strong> (1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Adventure-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some language and violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brian G. Hutton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Sandra Weintraub Roland and S. Lee Pogostin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Barry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ronnie Taylor\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 18, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Tom Selleck, Bess Armstrong, Jack Weston, Wilford Brimley, Robert Morley, Brian Blessed, Cassandra Gava, Michael Sheard, Lynda La Plante.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $28.4M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m sure Tom Selleck still rues the day he had to pass on the lead in Raiders of the Lost Ark due to his commitment to his TV series Magnum PI. Rumor has it that High Road to China<\/strong> was given to him as sort of a consolation prize. It’s more like a booby prize. Although regarded as a Raiders imitator, it\u2019s a pale echo of Spielberg\u2019s action-adventure classic at best. It\u2019s about as exciting as a day trip to Duluth. They should have called it Slow Boat to China.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Selleck stars as Patrick O\u2019Malley, a hard-drinking former WWI ace pilot who now offers flying lessons from a field outside Istanbul. He\u2019s approached by spoiled, strong-willed heiress Eve Tozer (Armstrong, Jaws 3D) who desperately needs to locate her missing father before his old business partner Bentik (Morley, The African Queen) has him declared legally dead and she loses her inheritance. This is the source of a major plot hole, but I\u2019ll come back to that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s hate at first sight for O\u2019Malley and Eve. They haggle about the price and Eve coming along on the mission even though she\u2019s an accomplished pilot. They argue about everything, in fact. They can\u2019t stand each other which can only mean they\u2019ll fall in love by movie\u2019s end. They fly off to the wild blue yonder in O\u2019Malley\u2019s biplanes (named Lillian and Dorothy for the Gish sisters) to Afghanistan, Tibet and China where they find Eve\u2019s dad (Brimley, Absence of Malice) getting ready to lead a band of villagers into battle against a Mongolian warlord.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Trust me, High Road to China<\/strong> is not as exciting as it sounds. It\u2019s boring and lifeless, two things a purported adventure movie should NOT be. The action scenes are flatly directed by Brian G. Hutton who saw better days with Where Eagles Dare, Kelly\u2019s Heroes and the underrated cop drama The First Deadly Sin. It says a lot or a little when a movie with a dogfight and a climax involving a cannon and a castle stronghold can\u2019t generate excitement. It barely generates mild interest.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It isn\u2019t enough that High Road to China<\/strong> is dull; it also self-destructs near the end with a gaping plot hole big enough to fly both Lillian and Dorothy through. The central conflict is finding Eve\u2019s father in time to stop Bentik from inheriting his company and wealth. He sends gunmen and a German pilot to stop Eve and O\u2019Malley. When they finally locate Dad, he provides a crucial piece of information that effectively kills Bentik\u2019s nefarious scheme. It\u2019s information that the family lawyer should have already known before he contacted Eve. This whole mess could have easily been avoided. Either he\u2019s a crappy lawyer or the writers didn\u2019t check their work.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The romance between Selleck and Armstrong\u2019s characters in one we\u2019ve seen done better in countless other movies. It follows a predictable trajectory that leads right up to the moment when they kiss passionately after surviving a potentially fatal situation. It\u2019s not that the two actors don\u2019t have chemistry, but it\u2019s nothing particularly special either. Their individual performances are just okay. Morley overacts shamelessly as the villain with nothing better to do than give his flunky a hard time about his bow tie. Jack Weston (The Four Seasons) has some good moments as O\u2019Malley\u2019s mechanic\/sidekick. It\u2019s too bad his character doesn\u2019t stick around until the end. No, he doesn\u2019t die; he just stays behind in Tibet while O\u2019Malley takes Eve to her father. Brimley brings a small measure of dignity to the proceedings, but it comes too late to save the movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To be fair, High Road to China<\/strong> isn\u2019t a lousy movie; it\u2019s simply a limp one. It moves slowly. It has no flair or style. You never get the sense that the characters are in any real danger even when a crazed Arab chieftan tries to force O\u2019Malley to attack a nearby British regiment. He simply does a spin once he\u2019s in the air and drops the brother holding him at gunpoint to the ground. That scene should have at least been amusing. It falls hard and flat like the rest of the movie. The saddest thing is High Road to China<\/strong> isn\u2019t even a decent bad movie. That\u2019s too bad; I really wanted to say it crashes and burns.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High Road to China (1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Adventure-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some language and violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brian G. Hutton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Sandra Weintraub Roland and S. Lee Pogostin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Barry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ronnie Taylor\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 18, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Tom Selleck, Bess Armstrong, Jack Weston, Wilford Brimley, Robert Morley, Brian Blessed, Cassandra Gava, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/High-Road-to-China-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5731"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5783,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5731\/revisions\/5783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}