User Reviews

From the novel by Jon Cleary, this high adventure (ala Indiana Jones) flick is a sight better than most. An enjoyable cast and a reasonable plot do help a lot.

The interaction between Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong is a lot of fun. Brian Blessed's nasty Khan is a hoot, as is "Heinz" man Robert Morley. Brian G. Hutton directs it all at a pace.

The whole affair of "High Road to China" is capped by John Barry's heroic theme and fantastic cinematography from Sandra Weintraub Roland and S. Lee Pogostin.

Saturday, April 10, 1999 - Video

I'm not sure why Tom Selleck's career as a leading man stalled when it did. I'm told he's handsome. And he has that cracked Jimmy-Stewart voice. In interviews he seems bright and articulate. He doesn't do a bang-up job in this light-hearted zap number but who could? All he's called upon to do is act drunk once in a while, and if he doesn't do as good a job as John Wayne did in "True Grit," well, maybe it's because Wayne has had so much more practice. Oh, and Selleck is also given lines like, "Surely, the great Suleman the Exquisite would not harm a small servant of his grateful guest." Something like that, anyway. Selleck did a fine job as Dwight D. Eisenhower in a recent TV movie -- "Ten Days to D-Day," perhaps it was.

The plot here -- self-indulgent pretty socialite hires handsome drunken pilot and his mechanic side kick to fly around most of Asia to find her missing father before she's disinherited -- is pretty familiar stuff. Runaway socialites and canny pilots. I keep thinking of Jimmy Cagney and Barbara Stanwyk lost in the desert. The photography is a bit gloomy but the locations are unusual and the action and comedy balance each other nicely. There's even a dogfight, which the slower, heavier two-seater with its single Lewis machine gun would surely have lost against the more nimble single-seater with its two machine guns. The reason the clumsier airplane wins is that it is flown by Tom Selleck, whereas the superior machine is flown by a stereotyped square-jawed blond German with no sense of humor.

The music is lush and romantic. The scenery rolling. The old airplanes fun to watch as they sputter along or flop over in hammerhead stalls. The dialog sort of lumbers along in the same way, without enough funny lines or wisecracks. Still, it's not offensive in any way. The kids will probably enjoy it. Maybe they will even learn a little something about Buddhism, such as that a world religion by that name exists.

Not a gem, but not bad.

This film will probably always be compared to "Raiders Of The Lost Ark". Compare most films to "Raiders..." and they will come out second best and, sadly, that is also the case here. However, High Road To China has lots to commend it and, taken on its own merits, is a very enjoyable film. On the surface, it's hard to see what's wrong with it. There are some superb flying sequences using vintage aircraft, some excellent cinematography, a score by John Barry (never a bad thing) and the two lead actors, Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong, deliver excellent performances.

And yet... there's something lacking. Where does it fail? It's hard to say exactly. Maybe the stakes aren't high enough - the quest is only so that the heroine, Evey, can find her father and save her inheritance, but when she's throwing about tens of thousands of pounds to hire O'Malley, it's difficult for the viewer to believe she's in dire need of financial security. Then there's the villain of the piece, Bentik. He's played well by Robert Morley, and whilst his scenes are quite amusing they're basically brief inserts and seem largely unconnected to the main events. He never meets the main protagonists at all.

Overall, High Road isn't quite as inventive as Raiders, it's not quite as pacey and perhaps the humour isn't quite as strong. The heroes do most of their fighting in aircraft, so it's less of an action picture in that sense, but the budding romance, although clichéd, is handled very well. Both Selleck and Armstrong act to a point where you can see what's going on behind the eyes, which helps make their on-screen relationship much more credible.

Battlestar Galactica followed in the wake of Star Wars and was too easily dismissed as a weak clone of that film. Its good points were overlooked for years, but eventually its qualities won recognition. Now, dare I say, the same re-evaluation is required for High Road To China. Write it off as a weak clone of Raiders Of The Lost Ark if you like, but you're missing a lot of good points in this decent film. It won't have you on the edge of your seat, but it will certainly hold your attention throughout.

MINOR PLOT SPOILERS BELOW.

OK, so my summary is a troll, but I maintain that it's accurate. Romantic setting, romantic theme. Could be Romancing the Stone, could be Indiana Jones, could be Star Wars, but it's this movie instead: pretty brat falls for initially repulsive scoundrel over the course of a wild adventure. Scoundrel turns out to be a hero in disguise; brat turns out to be a sweetheart. Of course. Maybe it's obvious that the leading man and leading lady end up together but just in case, you were warned.

Predictable romantic plot aside, the movie was quite entertaining. As a Magnum P.I. fan I have to say Tom Selleck influenced me to like the film. He did a great job. Ms. Armstrong is no Hollywood sex bomb but she makes a good leading lady in the role of strong willed spoiled brat turned strong willed cutie. Great scenery during the voyage. Bentik and his assistant are pretty funny too. Nice battle scenes throughout. All in all, a winner for an afternoon cable movie or in-flight movie, an OK rental.

The behind-the-scenes story behind the casting of Indiana Jones for Raiders of the Lost Ark has become Hollywood folklore. After screen testing and considering dozens of actors, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas opted for TV actor Tom Selleck. Alas, Selleck was contractually tied to his hit TV opus Magnum P.I., which forced him out of contention allowing Harrison Ford to make screen history. Anyone wondering how Selleck would have fared in the role had a chance to see when two years later he appeared in the Raiders knock-off High Road to China...Boy, did Spielberg and company dodge a bullet!

The plot, such as it is, is set in the 1920s and features flapper heiress Bess Armstrong being informed that she will lose her inheritance unless she locates her father (Wilford Brimley) last seen in the wilds of Afghanistan. She hires the services of boozy aviator Selleck to launch a search and a shoddy by-the-numbers adventure/comedy/romance results. See Tom and Bess get off on the wrong foot. See Tom and Bess bicker incessantly. See Tom and Bess make goo-goo eyes. See them bicker some more.

The film's problems are many. First, there is no decent villain. Robert Morley appears as a business partner who throws assorted problems in their path, but he is never a believably menacing adversary and his obstacles never seem more than irritants. Indeed, there is very little actual danger confronting our intrepid twosome, resulting in a dearth of suspense. At no point does it seem the leads are in any real jeopardy, unless it is from nodding off like the viewer.

Some of the scenery is lovely and John Barry contributes his usual reliable score, but therein ends the kudos. The screenplay is filled with groan-worthy dialog and an almost pathological lack of interest. The action sequences are positively stillborn and then film moves at the exhilarating pace of hardening concrete. I swear I grew a full beard by the end of the first hour.

Worst of all are the leads. Armstrong has never been one of my favorite performers and she demonstrates why here. Her heiress is so darn perky, she about bounces off the ceiling. Armstrong and company no doubt find this characteristic endearing, but I find it insufferable. To say she has no chemistry with her leading man is an understatement of gargantuan proportions, but then I am hard pressed to remember ANY leading lady that generated even minimal sparks with Selleck.

Selleck is a disaster. I freely admit, I never got his celebrity or his longevity in the business. He comes across as a handsome lumbering block of wood on screen - completely free of charisma. His idea of comedy is a bargain basement drunk impression and belching in the face of his leading lady. There is zero chemistry with Armstrong and it often appears that he is not even trying. He undergoes everything in the film with such a low wattage effort that he literally lowers the blood pressure of the viewer with each passing frame until one is nearly on the verge of losing consciousness.

With no chemistry between its leads, low-octane performances from its stars, no memorable villain, deadly dull action sequences and dialog penned by a grade-Z hack, this is one flight that viewers should definitely miss.

With all the will in the world this could have been a barn stormer. But then it was ALWAYS doomed for critical backwash.

The history of Tom Selleck and his tie to the Magnum contract that prevented him starting the Indiana franchise (and possibly ruining a decent film) is well documented. So much so that it almost appears as though this film was created as a consilation prize. "You didn't get Raiders, so here's some variation on the theme".

Sadly, despite the assitance of Brian Blessed (surely I was not the only one waiting for him to say "Indi, Indi!" alla John Rhys-Davies) it never got off the ground..... if you pardon the pun.

Still John Barry music good, if a little somber.

Oh and plot? Crape paper could take lessons from it.... plays out like a 1930's B movie, with all the trimmings. Mercilessly cut up for Sunday afternoon TV viewing during quiet summer months.

Still, only set Tom's movie carrier back 5 years... so can't be all that bad. And the ending. "No need to come out, all the value of the company is in patents". So a wasted journey.... You would have thought she'd have checked that before setting out and saved us all 2 hours.

An alcoholic bi-plane pilot is hired by a spoiled industrialist's daughter to search for her missing father through Asia.

But searching for her father eventually involves them in a struggle against a Chinese warlord....

This obviously was Selleck trying to show Spielberg what he missed out on when Selleck couldn't take the part because of his obligation to Magnum.

So this is his Indiana Jones, and I bet Spielberg drew a big sigh of relief. Selleck is fine in the first act, when he is filled with booze and falling all over the place, but then we get into the second and third acts, and it turns into one of the most clock watching films I've seen in a very long time.

The first act is full of so much promise, some good humour, genuine banter between him and his token sidekick, fantastic aerial camera- work, and quite an intriguing plot.

But then it goes as dry as the desert when we bump into Brian Blessed as the very loud, sexist, whatever nationality he's supposed to be leader.

He hates the three of them at first, but as soon as Selleck slaps the female lead, he's his best friend!!

And then it plods along until we bump into Wilfred Brimmley who has the rest of the budget so the film can have some explosions in the final set piece.

Selleck is a good actor, but some of his output was just inexplicably bad in the eighties, because the scripts he received must have been Magnum in prison, Magnum and baby on the door step, and Magnum in WWII.

This is Magnum on autopilot.