Pillaje al sol

First off this film has more style than I expect from John Farrow as a director, well photographed with style and camera movement. However the noir flashback structure and the various obvious Maltese Falcon knock off elements are pretty uninteresting this time around, pretty much every cliche you can think of comes up and seems to just get in the way of the real story starting. Much of the start is and a long long boat ride to Mexico. All these tiresome things, take up too much run time. Once the film finally gets to Mexico and some nice, but rather sparse, on location sequences it finally becomes interersting, as is the music by a Mexican symphonic composer. The actors do what they can with tiresome roles. Too bad they didn't actually make this mostly about the ruins and threat of ancient curses, which are pushed in all the promotional material for the film. Too bad the story doesn't do much with these possibly exciting elements. You could almost fast forward to when they arrive in Mexico and not miss anything.

Not much of David Dodge's novel remains in this film version, other than the names of some of the characters and the basic plot. American insurance investigator Al Colby is hired to smuggle a package out of Havana and into Oaxaca, Mexico. When the man who hired him is murdered aboard ship, Colby decides to find out what he is carrying and why it is worth killing for. Unscrupulous antiquities dealers, disgraced archaeologists, and desperate women all clash in a search for buried Zapotecan treasure. Glenn Ford is serviceable as Al Colby, but the plot is murky, the characters are under-developed, and the location is inexplicably changed from Peru to Mexico. Although it is long out-of-print, copies of the book are still relatively easy to find (unlike prints of this film, which is still tied up in Wayne estate litigation), and reading the book is a much better use of one's time.

I only decided to review this film after seeing other reviews that I feel had an unfair opinion of a honest work. The performances are excellent and the location and cinematography is beautiful. This film is very atmospheric and enjoyable in my opinion. Give it a look.

San Francisco insurance adjuster Glenn Ford (as Al Colby) is in hot water. He tells US authorities in Mexico what put him there… Quickly, we flashback as Mr. Ford arrives in Havana, Cuba. Strapped for cash, Ford meets alluring Patricia Medina (as Anna Luz) at a bar and takes a job offered by her old and ailing companion Francis L. Sullivan (as Thomas Berrien). Plagued by a bad heart and confined to a wheelchair, Mr. Sullivan hires Ford to help them smuggle a small package into Mexico. En route, the newly formed trio meet sneaky blond Sean McClory (as Jefferson), who is interested in small packages. Ford also encounters tipsy tramp Diana Lynn (as Julie Barnes), who propositions him with the line, "I like well built men." Finally, the package Ford is carrying opens, and mysteries are revealed. Unfortunately the plot thins and several in the cast act types rather than parts. However, the location photography by Jack Draper makes it nice looking.

***** Plunder of the Sun (8/26/53) John Farrow ~ Glenn Ford, Patricia Medina, Diana Lynn, Sean McClory

Too many wanna be's for my taste. In the first twenty minutes alone I counted three; Patricia Medina's Rita by way of Ava, Francis Sullivan's Sydney G, and S McClory's P Lorre. And then, as Snoop suggested below, there is Glenn Ford's I Don't Wanna Be as in I'm Phoning This One In. So before I could stick around for Diana Lynn's imitation (Mary Astor would be my guess) I bailed. Good location shooting, though, removes this John Farrow offering from the realm of utter crap.