China Gate
Action • War • Drama
Theatrical Release (US)
~ An American dynamiter love-locked in war-locked China! ~
Overview:
Near the end of the French phase of the Vietnam War, a group of mercenaries are recruited to travel through enemy territory to the Chinese border.
Director:
Samuel Fuller
Status:
Released
Language:
English
Buget:
$150,000.00
Revenue:
$0.00
Key words:
Cast
Gene Barry
~ as ~
Sgt. Brock
Angie Dickinson
Lucky Legs
Nat King Cole
Goldie
Paul Dubov
Capt. Caumont
Lee Van Cleef
Maj. Cham
George Givot
Cpl. Pigalle
Gerald Milton
Pvt. Andreades
Neyle Morrow
Leung
Marcel Dalio
Father Paul
Maurice Marsac
Col. De Sars
CinemaSerf
Written 3 year(s) ago
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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?
