Soldier of Fortune

A movie that's been in the FXM rotation for the last little while is Soldier of Fortune. It's on again tomorrow morning at 3:00 AM, and a couple of times next week.

After some establishing footage showing that our story is going to be set in Hong Kong, we see the arrival of one of those rare things for back in the early 1950s: a woman traveling alone. That woman is Jane Hoyt (Susan Hayward), and she obviously must have a good reason for traveling alone. In fact, her husband Louis (Gene Barry) is a photojournalist, who "officially" crossed the border illicitly to do a story on daily life in Communist China. He's never returned, and Jane wants to find him.

The Americans can't really help her since her husband crossed the border illegally (and one wonders whether he was really on a mission for the government) and because they don't run the place. The British still owned Hong Kong at the time, and they can't do anything either because Louis did after all break the law, and he's not a UK subject. Jane asks around, and it's eventually suggested she contact Hank Lee (Clark Gable).

Hank is officially working in the import/export business, but that's really a euphemism for smuggling stuff between Hong Kong, mainland China, and Macao, which at the time was still a Portuguese colony. Hank is eventually willing to help out Jane, but it's less because she's got a lot of money and more because he loves her. Frankly, he'd love to just run off with her and let Louis die in China, but that's a big no-no for Jane, even though she's beginning to find that Hank might be a more interesting partner for her than Louis. Hank can only get Jane if he actually appeals more than Louis when he's with Jane, so he has to reunite them first.

The story in Soldier of Fortune is one where there's not really a whole lot of "there" there. It's a bit slow and talky, and the exciting part that is implied by a title like Soldier of Fortune doesn't come until about the last 20 minutes and even then isn't all that exciting. It's not terrible; it's just not a highlight of either Gable's or Hayward's careers. (You'll note that I haven't even bothered to mention the presence of Michael Rennie as a British police officer.) What does make the movie worth watching is the footage of Hong Kong. There's establishing footage, and a lot of rear-projection photography, and the Color by Deluxe makes it look lovely. It's just too bad the movie has been panned and scanned down to 16:9 except for the credits.

Soldier of Fortune doesn't seem to be on DVD, either, so you're going to have to catch the FXM showings.