Tearing down the walls of this Technicolor farce

HONG KONG (1952)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Hong Kong" should have been a fun, exciting, spirited adventure tale with a rugged hero searching for a golden Buddha statue. Along the way he encounters a Chinese orphan boy and a flaming red-headed teacher and, of course, the statue which he hopes to sell in the Chinese marketplace. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Uninspired and frequently anemic, "Hong Kong" is a bit of a chore to sit through and Ronald Reagan doesn't make it any easier.

The People's Republic of China has formed and many farmers in the mainland are shot to death. A young Chinese orphan named Wei Lin (Danny Chang - all monotonous smiles in this movie) is taken in inadvertently by an ex-G.I. (Ronald Reagan), Jeff Williams. It is on a canoe that Jeff finds the golden statue encrusted with diamonds and various jewels, something that would not sell for less than 100 dollars on the Jewel TV channel. While escaping with kid and statue in tow and a Red Cross Mission teacher, Victoria Evans (Rhonda Fleming), I began to settle in for an old-fashioned adventure yarn. Instead the movie crawls like a snail who drank too much decaf tea. The movie should feel urgent and captivating and it merely slows down and contains episodes that left me cringing and wondering who the expected audience was - people that love "Secret of the Incas" or those that love the antics of "Bedtime for Bonzo"? The orphan follows Jeff in a Hong Kong that looks so artificial and studio-based that I was surprised the cardboard walls did not topple over. The kid follows and follows Jeff, and Jeff tries to leave the kid and can't since the little tyke keeps clinging to him. The kid has a bowl of noodles and Jeff splits. Jeff suddenly has a change of heart, comes back to the restaurant and finds the kid has eaten 3 bowls of noodles! Then there is the forced romance between Jeff and the teacher that is wanting at best. Fleming's Victoria is apparently the kind of woman who can look past a man's indiscretions and lust for gold because the soldier of fortune came back for a Chinese orphan whom they decide to leave in an orphanage at the end anyway. Give me a break.

There is one inspired element in the film, more inspired in hindsight than to the 1952 audiences. When Jeff thinks of splitting with the money he hopes to collect from the antique statue, he reserves passage in the American President Lines ship. How prophetic.