Title great! Film . . . not so much. Everybody’s just going thru the motions on this little crime pic, taken from an Irwin Shaw novel about two ex war pilots (Robert Taylor; Jack Lord) drifting in Madrid. Taylor, all but divorced from Dorothy Malone, figures she’s better off without him, especially after he loses his last stake on a horse race gone crooked. Now, he’ll have to face his fear of flying on a smuggling run for shady character Martin Gabel. Shaw’s Hemingway pastiche has it’s possibilities, at least, it’s pretty to think so*, but the dialogue & character relationships barely scratch the surface in a film that’s short on energy & style until it finally hits the long-haul smuggling operation, neatly handled by vet megger Richard Thorpe (always at his best in what would normally be Second-Unit stuff) with Taylor & his little French pal (Marcel Dalio) showing the only affectionate relationship in here.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Jack Lord looks late 20s; Taylor, tired & worn beyond his years, looks mid-50s. Yet less than a decade stands between them: Lord 37; Taylor 46.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Out earlier the same year, Henry King’s wan try at Hemingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES, Shaw’s obvious model here. OR: Also that year, Malone & more fatalistic pilots in Douglas Sirk’s superb adaptation of Faulkner’s PYLON, renamed THE TARNISHED ANGELS.
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