Hong Kong

Ronald Reagan has a heart of gold; isn't that swell? In Hong Kong, he plays a thief sent to rob a Chinese boy of a valuable artifact, only to soften up and join forces with his guardian from the orphanage, Rhonda Fleming. He tries to come off as Mr. Smooth at first, but Rhonda doesn't fall for it. Her first priority is always to protect the children, so as she and her charge travel through Hong Kong, Ronnie has to tag along and pretend to be an ally instead of a crook.

If you guess that somewhere along the way, his pretending turns to genuine caring, you're probably a very smart person. Or you've just seen a lot of B-pictures. No offense to the two leads, but they both specialized in B-pictures, so it's a cinch that the four they made together weren't going to win any Oscars. I'm always up for some eye candy, but even I wouldn't recommend this one. It's predictable and neither well written nor believable.

I like this one. Ronald Reagan, who helped tear down the Berlin wall in real life, battles communism in Asia with this film, although the viewer might not realize that's part of what this film is about. It isn't full of rhetoric, but instead is full of drama. Mostly the film is about an orphaned Chinese boy in the care of an American, Jeff Williams (Reagan). Williams struggles with greed versus human compassion. It is a good human drama with some romance also between the Reagan character and the lovely Victoria Evans played by Rhonda Fleming who did a wonderful job. There is some action in the movie to boot. The little orphan in the movie is adorable for lack of a more macho word from a manly man such as myself. LOL.

My best memory of this film is when Ronald Reagan's character walks into a Chinese refugee camp and asks a Chinese gentleman "what kind of clambake is this"? Very sensitive and thoughtful stuff. They showed Reagan films on tv quite a bit back when he was first elected president, then they started to disappear. With the passing of the great communicator, perhaps they will reappear, but I would bet against it. I don't recall much else about this eminently forgettable film with the exception of the quoted line, but I do recall it being pretty much total dreck, and Reagan giving his normal b-minus level performance. It's tough to actually write ten lines about this film, but I'm trying my best!

Not a great film in its own right but it certainly was responsible for a later greater franchise of films starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark. A brief checklist proves the point: fedora and leather jacket wearing hero that is a good, all action guy but sometimes strays into morally grey areas? Check. His name is Jeff Williams but his love interest comes from Indiana, so substitute another Welsh name for his surname and add a bit of geography and we have Indiana Jones. An orphaned oriental boy as his sidekick? Check. A feisty heroine and romantic interest that joins him on his adventures? Check. Dastardly foreign villains? Check. A sought after golden statuette? Check. A plane running out of fuel that is forced to 'crash' land? Check. Actually this is a fun little film and largely because of noting all these influences and Director/co-writer Lewis R Foster was no slouch having directed a number of early, classic shorts starring Laurel and Hardy. Ronald Reagan and Rhonda Fleming in the leads are both likeable and have decent chemistry together and Nigel Bruce and Mary Somerville, as an older upper crust couple and Claud Allister as a beleaguered Hotel manager, all add moments of welcome, gentle comedy. As it is set in Hong Kong, we would expect to see a number of Asian actors in prominent roles but that is not really the case. Danny Chang is the moppet, Wei Lin who adds heart to the story and Marvin Miller is a suitably oily Eastern bad guy. But the stakes never feel particularly high and it relies too much on obviously stock footage. That said, it passes an hour and a half of time agreeably enough.

Still with Warner Brothers, Ronald Reagan was now allowed to make outside films and he signed with Paramount again to do Hong Kong with their B picture unit headed by William Pine and William Thomas. He had done his first outside picture and his first western with these two guys and liked the experience. And he no doubt liked his leading lady Rhonda Fleming as they did well on screen together and their politics were completely in sync. He did four films with Fleming all told.

This one as the title says takes place in Hong Kong as Reagan and Fleming and a bunch of refugees arrive there fleeing from the new Communist government. Reagan is your basic soldier of fortune who saw his war surplus selling business go belly up with the new rulers in China. Fleming is the daughter of a missionary. Among others they have in tow is little Danny Chang a young orphan who has a gold statue encrusted with some jewels of a Buddha. The kind of statue that would make Sydney Greenstreet envious.

Reagan figures to make some good money selling this item and his Sydney Greenstreet turns out to be Marvin Miller. And Miller is a ruthless as Caspar Guttman in obtaining what he wants.

Reagan thinks he wants money, but he's tamed by the love of a good woman and an innocent child. Definitely something we've seen before.

Still this is a nice well made action picture in the Pine-Thomas tradition. Throughout the film Reagan sports a fedora that looks like something that might have inspired the creators of Indiana Jones and those films. It fits him and his character like the fedora on Harrison Ford's head.

Reagan would make one more film with Pine-Thomas and again it was with Rhonda Fleming. They made a good screen couple, too bad he didn't work with her over at Warner Brothers in his prime years.

His prime years as a player that is.