China Gate

CinemaSerf6/10

Sep 8, 2022

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Set in the final days of French Indochina, this adventure films follows the daring exploits of a group mercenaries who are charged with venturing deep into enemy territory to blow up and arms dump. Local smuggler "Lucky Legs" (Angie Dickinson) offers to help out provided they guarantee that her young son can seek refuge in the USA, and when that is promised this rather rag-tag group set off. The action elements of this film are few and far between. For the most part, it is more of an observation as a group of fairly unsavoury folks illustrate to the audience a whole range of rather unpleasant character traits. Gene Barry ("Sgt. Brock") is the father of her child, and also a rather racist individual and he leads the group further and further into danger just as his command begins to fracture under the pressure of their intolerances and bigotries. I just never got why Angie Dickinson was a star. She is aptly named here, but her performance is truly fish-out-of-water and there is precisely no chemistry between her and the odious "Brock". How did they ever manage to conceive a child? The jungle terrain does offer us a degree of claustrophobia as they home in on their target, and her manipulative relationship with the devious "Maj. Cham" (Lee Van Cleef) does ignite the plot a little, but for the most part this is all rather procedural and predictable. Ideal for a drive-in I'd say, when perhaps your mind was elsewhere?