DKosty123
This film is an interesting mix of what you'd expect, but then what you do not. We not only have Anthony Quinn playing an Asian, we have Korean actors playing Japanese. Scott is playing a hero, and actually brings his role as a Doctor over so much that it is convincing. Rather than list the cast, let's just say everyone is quite effective from Scott and Warrick to the young boy playing the Goat. The story is based on a novel about the war in Asia and this film is one of the earlier ones about that part of the war.. Scott, the American Doctor who is coming back a hero, from the US raising money for his Hospital, near the front with the Japanese in China. He brings a new wife who is not quite ready for the facing pf air raids, and wants to take her huband away from there back to the US. The plot gets a bit more twisted bacause of the beautiful woman doctor he works with, the Chinese Doctor and the Japanese War Prisoner. Couple those with the Chinese Undergound and there are a few twists.The best thing about the film is the fighting sequences look better here than in other war films made this decade. The diverse cast brings off a good film despite the fact they are playing roles other than the expected ones. The love and tragic story is done pretty well. One major flaw though, late in the film Scott gets shot, and then in the next scene and the rest of the film, there is no sign he was ever wounded.
vincentlynch-moonoi
If you are looking for a faithful telling of a Pearl Buck novel, my guess is (though I have not read Buck) that this is not it. If you are looking for a typical Hollywood melodrama -- albeit set in China -- then you'll probably enjoy this flick. I rather liked it.It's a love triangle between an American male doctor (Randolph Scott), a female American doctor (Ruth Warrick) who is subtly in love with him, and a new American wife (Ellen Drew) who has other plans for her new husband that do not include China.The cast here is quite strong. I always preferred Randolph Scott in this era of his career, rather than later when he mostly did Westerns. He's very good here as the romantic lead.Ruth Warrick is really good as Dr. Sara Durand. I was not very familiar with her, but -- at least here -- I enjoyed her performance.I couldn't quite decide if I disliked Ellen Drew as Louise Thompson, or I just disliked her role. At any rate, she plays it for all its worth.Anthony Quinn is very interesting here as a sort of Chinese war lord. He actually looks authentic (with the eye makeup), and of course, this was that era in his career when he played a variety of ethnic characters.Carol Thurston as a Chinese nurse is interesting. Made up well, she appeared to be Chinese.Richard Loo as Colonel Yasuda -- the evil Japanese -- overplays the role a bit by always shining his teeth in a way that's very unreal.Ducky Louie is a heck of a good Chinese child actor.Philip Ahn as a Koren-Japanese doctor is very good and brings some intrigue into the film in a sub plot.I enjoyed this film as a slightly different angle of a World War II romance.
Robert J. Maxwell
The very definition of "programmer." Randolph Scott and the two ladies that form the other points of the triangle are okay, but Anthony Quinn with his pasted-back eyelids is a heavy cross for any movie to bear, even for 1945. It doesn't help that the dialog, as usual, is given to the foreigners without any contractions. "You will help or we will die." The Korean Philip Ahn is Scott's doctor colleague and he ponders his torn allegiances with precise diction. Richard Loo, a Hawaiian-born Chinese, is a perennial Japanese ghoul in these war-time flicks, sinister and sneering.It's an inexpensive movie, a love story set amid the Japanese invasion of China, and it looks slack and limp. The Chinese hills look like California hills. Actors hit their spot and say their lines, look disturbed or happy, and then walk away.It's good that it was made, though. After the Japanese invasion, the slaughter in China was enormous. It's not something the West likes to think about too often now, because Japan is now our friend, while China is a communist country that sells us cheap goods. Gosh.
Sheldon Aubut
China Sky is interesting as it shows a side of WWII that is seldom seen, the war in China. Few realize the enormity of what the Japanese did to China and it is seldom seen on television or in the movies. This gives at least a glimpse into that world.The story was written by Pearl S. Buck. It has some of the worst dialog I've seen in a movie in many years. The story is predictable, and there is not one thing in the plot that comes as a surprise. The acting is a bit better than the dialog, but that really isn't saying much.This movie is worth watching if for nothing else but the subject matter, but if one is expecting to be entertained please watch something else.
AD
