This would be a great picture if they'd just cut out all the religious mumbo jumbo.
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willcwhite — 12 years ago(October 31, 2013 07:57 PM)
Eh, I've revised my opinion. This picture started out great, but it lost steam in the middle. By the time they got back on shore, it had totally lost me. Some great lines though! Except the Christey stuff.
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plwblj — 11 years ago(October 14, 2014 10:59 PM)
Cambreau is what and who makes the film;he's the core,the magnet,if you will.I like Gable,Lucas,etc.But,the charismatic Hunter establishes this MGM TALE to a "cut above" an actioner,or,simply some other dramatic story.There is an intensity to what "really matters" in life esp.when one reaches the dregs such as Vern and the others do.
Fortunately,it is NOT preachy or particularly moralizing.That part of it brings the flic into more or less a special orbit.In fact,I really did not know how the movie would play out !
Notice,too,how "the legalist" bible thumper who consigns literally everyone in the barracks to hell,how he's a very secondary role who greatly contrasts Hunter's who is full of grace and wishes to be at anyone's beck and call if they need a friend,a counselor or a wise man.This per se is unusual and enhances the story of redemption to even the "lowliest of the low." -
cyninbend-149-610489 — 10 years ago(April 01, 2016 03:29 AM)
Todd 197,
I've read it cover to cover, attended Christian schools, and spent the first 2 decades of my life immersed in Christianity. I thought the movie was awful. Stupid movie with great acting. Horrid characters the world would be better off withoutthe ugliest creaturesright up there with Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear and that awful guy in Gone With The Wind (the guy who got the white trash lady pregnant and worked for Scarlett's family in charge of slaves I think?) People without a redeeming quality who just drag us all down and never contribute anything good or beautiful to the world. Hokey Jesus character takes over after the "typical" Christian character (who talks up a storm about religion, wears a cross, but won't share food and would let people die in front of him before he'd share) is pretty much out of the action. BoringI fell asleep twice and had to rewind, waiting for the good part that never came. Don't be so sure that just because you loved it, others will too just because of its message. I'd rather watch something more straight forward about the message and uplifting than this ugliness.
plwblj,
I found it terribly preachy! About 90% of the entire movie after the escapees hit the beach is preachiness and yelling/snarling at each other interspersed with Jesus calmly commenting or quizzing them. Blech! Completely cringe IMO. And then they become smiling characters who want to get married they are so reformed? Just NO. -
elliott-43 — 9 years ago(April 02, 2016 11:33 PM)
It depends how you understand Christianity. The League of Decency was apoplectic in its condemnation of the film for its embrace of behaviors judged at the time as morally corrupt, for having no more and no less a shot at finding God's grace as those who conformed to the League's heavy-handed, proscriptive, moral code. The film was very Christianand it rebelled against a Taliban type of controlled, Christian morality, that the clucking, imperious, League upheld.
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PygmyLion — 8 months ago(July 26, 2025 04:39 PM)
I tend to agree with you. I think this could have been a pretty good movie, if it had just dealt with a group of desperate men trying to escape from a French penal colony in the middle of the jungle.
Instead they decided to add this angel-like figure Cambreau (Ian Hunter) that made the movie sort of silly.
Of course, the end of the movie only makes sense because of the movie code.