The Fighting American

From a skimming of the original reviews for THE FIGHTING AMERICAN, this weird movie was considered a parody of other films of the period. You got the all-American college kid, the goody-goody love interest (played by a gorgeous young Mary Astor), and a melodramatic series of events in China. The plot lurches along, caring very little if any of the plot progressions make sense, but then again, the point of the movie was its silliness anyway, as telegraphed from the introductory title card describing the movie as "nonsense." However, the film wasn't weird enough for me to recommend it to any but the extremely curious.

At a time when action is all EFFECT by some computer, this old time movie had both contrived action as well as REAL stunts done by BRAVE people who might have DIED performing them.

In a safe Hollywood where the real world is slaughtering each other with NO regard for human rights to life, the old style made movies where life could be lost in the making of the movie.

Further the story line and the characters are all plausible and endearing in their enactment.

I recommend this movie for the aficionado's of silent film. The side character of a soldier who is befriended by the hero, then helps the hero is well done as well. It is a rousing example of movies the way movies should be made once in a while:

ENTERTAINING.

The disclaimer at the start of this movie states that it is "guaranteed not to make you think". The makers did not want you to take it seriously but instead to consider it a "masterpiece of nonsense", purely for the entertainment of the viewer.

The story passes through college fracases and progress to China and some battling factions of war. It really is crazy to put the prospective romance of the two key characters in such a variety of muddled circumstances.

By far the most impressive scene comes when two early biplanes undergo an unorthodox dogfight with the China skirmishes. I was awed when one of the plane passengers got on top of his plane's top wing and jumped over to the other plane. This was no staged fake....the stunt man really did it, and it looked incredibly dangerous.

Don't look for much of a plot but there is entertainment here and a budding actress named Mary Astor.