High Road To China
What would have become of the career of Tom Selleck if only he hadnât turned down the part of Indiana Jones in 1980? Certainly he would have become a megastar to say the least, and after rejecting it by saying that he didnât like the script only to see it turn into a worldwide phenomenon, he obviously had some of his people do damage control by having them endeavor to find him a Jones-like adventure film to call his very own, which led to this 1983 release which is chocked full of adventure and romance, but outside of the cinematography and John Barry score, is nearly a disaster on every level, but even then Selleck redeems it by carrying it squarely on his shoulders using old fashioned movie star charisma. Selleck plays Patrick OâMalley, a World War I fighter pilot and hero now reduced to the level of a drunken schlub somewhere in England. The story involves a spoiled rotten heiress (Bess Armstrong, at the peak of her movie star run in â83 before descending into obscurity) who finds out that if she doesnât produce her father in front of a British court in 12 days, she stands to lose all the money from her inheritance. So, in desperate need of a plane to fly out to China and track him down, she enlists Selleck (for a hefty fee) to teach her how to fly (which takes all of five minutes) and accompany her on the trip, which includes stops at a British airfield and at a tribal Afghan outpost, where Selleck is offered another large amount of money to âsellâ Armstrong to the local tribal chieftainâs (the legendary booming character actor Brian Blessed) nephew, only to bomb and machine gun the hell out of them and move on to Tibet, where they learn that her father is in the Himalayas overseeing some kind of revolution of the people, and fly out there for the final act. Along the way we get bickering, lots and lots of bickering between Selleck and Armstrong which is supposed to show them falling in love, and even though Armstrong is unlikable and not all that attractive either, the chemistry between her and Selleck is actually quite strong, though the interaction they have is really borderline sexist, with Selleck often telling her to shut up and at one point he literally belts her in order to gain the trust of Blessed who feels women should be seen and not heard, but later on it leads to the filmâs most genuinely touching moment, when Armstrong is sick with fever in the Tibetan village and Selleck gently holds and comforts her back to health. Other roles see Jack Weston doing his usual mushmouth comic relief routine as Selleckâs partner in crime; Wilford Brimley as the wayward father playing the role as if he had just been given a double shot of his diabetes medication; Cassandra Gava (best known as the ultra-sexy witch from Conan The Barbarian) as a slave girl in the tribal village who helps enable their escape; and Robert Morley completely shoehorned into the film as Brimleyâs business partner who wants to stop Armstrong from finding him, sending a number of thugs after them including a German fighter pilot who has an impromptu dogfight with Selleck, all the while we get a scene with Morley about every fifteen minutes or so where he gets brought more bad news and proceeds to chew out his meek little assistant. In all we get a film that compared to the Indy films is really just one big mess, but at least Selleck with his presence and easy charm somehow gets it to work, overcoming a bad script and several improbable plot points to at least manage to make this film watchable, and at best, enjoyableâŚ
7/10