BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

DKosty123 I am so surprised that this movie was made in 1949. It plays much like war propaganda films made during the war. The story of the rubber shortage during the beginning of the war and some Americans and others getting involved to steal rubber in Malaysia. Spencer Tracy does some fine acting here. He also punches out several people and somehow it seems like he actually does. Valentina Cortese is the leading woman, she is even shorter than Tracy. James Stewart has a different type of role here as a brother trying to get revenge with the Japanese after his brother is killed in the war. Sydney Greenstreet is a bad guy whose playing both sides. Lionel Barrymore has a brief role early in the film. John Hodiak is featured as Kellar.For some reason, when the film ends, it has the feel of what might have been a war propaganda film. This might be because the story was written by Manchester Boddy who wrote a film called "Mr. Blabbermouth" which was one of those films. Frank Fenton converted it for the screen as he did other films often in the 1950's.

jhkp This is a good action-adventure picture based on the true account of how very necessary rubber was gotten out of Malaya, under the nose of the Japanese, for the Allied war effort in World War Two.Spencer Tracy and James Stewart are teamed as a two-fisted con (sprung from Alcatraz for the job) and a hard-bitten reporter recruited by American intelligence (represented by John Hodiak). There's some action, some atmosphere, some romance. The premise of the film is unusual enough to hold your interest. Like some other MGM films of the time, the entire foreign locale has been recreated on the back lot and the sound stages of the studio. You may recognize the river area and other locations from earlier films.The direction by Richard Thorpe is, as usual, competent. If you're a fan of masculine-oriented action-adventure films from that era, this one has good acting, writing, and a touch of intelligence. The fine cast includes Sydney Greenstreet, Valentina Cortesa, Gilbert Roland, and Lionel Barrymore.

vincentlynch-moonoi Spencer Tracy plays a smuggler who is released from prison to help Jimmy Stewart sneak a huge rubber crop out of Japanese-held Malaya during WW II. They sneak into the country and meet up with Sydney Greenstreet (in his last film), who helps them recruit a group of men to assist, including Gilbert Roland. They use money and force to purchase all the available rubber, but the Japanese find out and ambush the last shipment. Who will live to complete the mission? I don't like the first 18 minutes of this film because I don't care much (at least usually) for film noir...and although this is not a gangster flick, the beginning is definitely noir. It is nice, within that portion of the film to see Lionel Barrymore, and nice also to see John Hodiak, both of whom do what they need to do to advance the plot.Some people don't like the Jimmy Stewart character we meet here, because it's not the nice Jimmy Stewart we all came to like. Here's he's a rather cynical newspaper reporter, and he does fine in the part.About 20 minutes into the film he teams up with Tracy, fresh out of Alcatraz for the heist of the rubber from Malaysia. If you are a fan of Tracy, and have seen his pics from 1945 to 1948, you know he was aging fast, and here, in 1949, he is surprisingly older...and it's not makeup.The Old Dutchman is played by Sydney Greenstreet, who was suffering from diabetes and a form of kidney disease at the time. This was his last film before he retired; he died a little over 4 years later. Here he plays the owner of a café of sorts, in a role not dissimilar to the one he played in "Casablanca", although here he is sweatier and dirtier.Richard Loo plays Japanese Colonel Tomura. Gilbert Roland is one of the men who helps Tracy and Stewart. John Hodiak is an FBI agent. Valentina Cortese is good as Luana, Tracy's girlfriend.This is not a great film like "Casabalnca", and it was clearly not a film into which MGM invested great sums of money. But, it's a different kind of WWII film, and as such, a welcome change. The action is pretty decent, and it does make some sense. Tracy is very good here, Stewart is reasonably good, and there's a degree of suspense since you have a pretty good idea that one of the good guys is going to die before the end of the picture. But, which one? Tracy and Steward fans will want this on their DVD shelf. It's on mine.

MartinHafer If this movie did not have Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy, the film wouldn't have even merited a score of five. It was a very uninspiring and forgettable wartime film made several years after the war actually ended. It just seemed like all the energy was missing from the film. In fact, about the only energy came from Sidney Greenstreet's pet bird--now that bird can act! Another problem with the film is the idea of casting Spencer Tracy in the role of a selfish, devil-may-care smuggler in Alcatraz at the beginning of the film. The believability of the performance didn't improve once he made it to Malaya. This is actually the sort of role I might have expected for Clark Gable or maybe even Errol Flynn (yes, I know he was with a different studio), but for Tracy, an actor who often was cast as the priest or nice guy, it just wasn't terribly convincing. Plus, he just acted too nice to be as seedy as they described him as being.In the end, the only interesting thing about this film is how so much money was spent on the cast and so little bang was achieved for MGM's buck. This is purely a time-passer or film for those devotees of Stewart or Tracy.