High Road to China

It's ok.

This movie could teach young filmmakers a great deal about what made Raiders of the Lost Ark so great, since Brian G. Hutton's ripoff has none of it whatsoever. It has bland cinematography, an overabundance of exposition, racist characterization, and a bland score. Its main antagonists turn out to have almost no bearing on the plot. The comic relief never once connects. The end turns out so anticlimactic that even the characters express their disappointment on screen! Why did I watch this?!

This is one decent adventure movie from the wave of movies that success of Indiana Jones started. Like always Tom Selleck overcompensates the lack of acting talent with thick mustache. Thank god he was busy with TV work and wasn't available for Indiana Jones role. Bar the protagonist that can't act, this movie is alright. It's shot on many exotic locations, and it looks like they had a good budget for it. Plot follows genre conventions to the note and doesn't fuck up at it.

I kept waiting for the characters to redeem themselves. They didn't. I'm still waiting.

A tongue-in-cheek spoof on the "Indiana Jones" franchise, derived from the fact that Selleck was considered for the Indiana Jones role but could not accept as he was under contract to "Magnum, P.I." at the time. This is not really very good, but I had to give it credit for not taking itself too seriously. It actually plays like one of those movie spoof episodes of Magnum they did one of per season, so is must-viewing for fans of that series. For those who aren't, it's disposable fare.

Enjoyable adventure film where the two main characters engage us in liking them in spite of their dislike for each other. But they also draw us into the journey and what adventure really means, flying two biplanes through some spectacular sequences and into some tight situations. It would be overstating it to say that the whole point is lead up to one of the more well set up memorable quotes ever (which isn't even listed at IMDb), but it feels like it.