Alicia I love this movie so much

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Leofwine_draca NORTH WEST FRONTIER is a solidly enjoyable adventure story that might well be described as a British western. The setting is India at the turn of the 20th century, with Kenneth More and Lauren Bacall tasked with rescuing a six-year-old Hindu prince from a clutch of murderous Muslims who want to kill him and thus destroy his ruling family's bloodline.Much of the action is centred on a train, with More and a clutch of passengers doing their very best to escape from an overwhelming horde of gun-toting enemies. And the film has a real verve to it, near-constant well-shot intrigue and suspense courtesy of director J. Lee Thompson, who would keep on directing strong action for the next thirty years of his career. It helps that it hits the ground running, offering some electric action at the opening that Hollywood can only dream of.The rest of the film is a nice mix of character work and suspense staples. I think the production could have had twenty minutes or even half an hour shaved off it quite easily, but it's still an above-average effort. More has a naturally likable screen presence and is one of my favourite stars of the era, and he's supported well by a spiky Bacall here. Inevitably one of the passengers is a traitor and there are no prizes for guessing who given that Herbert Lom is in the cast, but he gives a strong performance of depth and class. Wilfrid Hyde White and Ursula Jeans round out the cast, although the real scene-stealer is I.S. Johar as the lovable Gupta. Containing slightly controversial religious themes that feel just as relevant today (if not more so than in the 1950s), NORTH WEST FRONTIER is one to catch.

l_rawjalaurence J. Lee Thompson's adventure (retitled FLAME OVER India) is a dramatic tale of an hazardous train journey to take Indian Prince Kishan (Govind Raja Ross) out of the clutch of Muslim rebels and into safety. The passengers comprise a diverse group - the brave soldier Captain Scott (Kenneth More), the feisty doctor's wife (Lauren Bacall), the impassive governor's spouse (Ursula Jeans), a British bureaucrat (Wilfrid Hyde White), an arms-dealer (Eugene Deckers) and a Dutch journalist (Herbert Lom) who turns out to be a saboteur in disguise.Thrillingly photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth in India, NORTH-WEST PASSAGE contains some spectacular sequences as the beaten-up old train plows across the Indian landscape under Gupta's (I. S. Johar's) control. Frequently attacked by Muslim rebels, who are seen galloping towards the train on horseback, the passengers manage to repel them with a combination of luck and sheer courage. The film does contain its fair share of stereotypes: Hyde-White's Bridie is suave yet naive; Jeans does a fair job of sustaining her stiff upper lip in the face of adversity; while Bacall shows a commendable disdain for British authority (as an American, she is accustomed to having her own way).Yet the film is a fascinating product of its time, as it tries to transmit a liberal message at a time when the British Empire was in the process of breaking up. More's Captain Scott is both brave yet fair (it is no coincidence that his name should recall that of the intrepid polar explorer, immortalized in SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC (1948)), and tries his best to look after the Prince. While Lom's Van Leyden possesses violent instincts, he continually castigates the British for their desire to divide and rule: what is evident from the Governor's wife's behavior, both towards the Prince and to a little Indian baby they find on the way, is that she is not interested in power, but rather trying to help people in distress. Likewise Bacall makes every effort to look after the Prince, as well as helping Scott out when all seems lost. Whereas the British are still in power - the action takes place in 1905, some forty-three years before India gained independence - they are more than willing to share it, and thereby ensure that everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law. Such policies were also pursued at the end of the Fifties (when the film was released) as the British oversaw a series of peaceful transitions to independent government in both Africa and Asia.

Balthazar-5 I have just watched this little gem for the first time since my childhood. Of course then, I didn't know much about classic cinema, it was just a ripping good yarn with funny and pointed dialogue. With the benefit of a life in cinema behind me, it is much, much better than I remember. Think somewhere midway between 'The Lady Vanishes' and Ford's 'Stagecoach'. Perhaps this should not be so surprising as the writer of the original screenplay from which this is adapted is Frank Nugent, scenarist of 'Fort Apache', 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon' and other classic, if less apposite John Ford films. So from Nugent comes the 'army against the Indians' and from the very British situation come the characters who could easily have stepped out of a Hitchcock comedy. In fact there is a moment in the film which is almost identical to a moment in 'Lady Vanishes'. Kenneth More is handing out the guns and the lovable English colonialist, Bridie (Wilfred Hyde White perfectly cast)reluctantly takes one, and then admits that he once won something in a fairground.This is almost identical to the scene towards the end of 'The Lady Vanishes' when, again, the guns are being handed out and Naunton Wayne, as Caldicott admits to having won something at a fairground.Of course, J Lee Thompson is not Hitchcock, so there are some lesser moments, but really this is so much better than so much of the hyperbolic tedium of modern cinema.There is a lot more in this than one would either hope or expect. It's funny too!

Neil Welch Younger film viewers may never have encountered Kenneth More, and so may no idea of how important a film star he was in post-war England, nor of what part he played. I think it is fair to say that he almost always played the same sort of character - a stolid, decent, hearty, English everyman, the sort who would always stand up and be counted when the chips were down, a no-fuss, unassuming hero.In North West Frontier he plays a British Army captain tasked with escorting a young Indian prince to his parents across bandit country on a small train with a motley handful of others, one of whom (fairly obviously Herbert Lom) may have an alternate agenda.More plays his usual character in this small epic, greatly enhanced by the bleak landscapes of Spain standing in for India, by the small and antiquated steam engine (the real hero of the film), and a winning turn from I.S. Johar as engineer Gupta.