Wow. 1 hour and 20 minutes of Engineering 101 and then WHAM. Followed shortly by what I can only assume was an intermission.
They sure don’t make em like that anymore.
I love this movie almost as much as I love the book. Richard McKenna was an under-rated and under-appreciated author.
But yeah, they don’t make movies like that much anymore, do they?
There’s Engineering in it, too? For all these years I thought it was just Steve McQueen and a BAR. Which normally would be enough, but our paths never crossed. Now I HAVE to see it.
A story about a throwaway kid whose only option is the military, where he buries himself in his skills but gets dragged into conflict because he can’t buy the patriotic claptrap and abide the fact that he’s a pawn to American corporate overseas profits? No, that has no relevance today.
I think it’s way too long and meanders all over the place, but I must like it because I seem to end up slogging my way through every time it comes on.
That, and “What the Hell happened?” is a real punch in the gut no matter how many times I see it.
Is this the movie where the guy goes down into the oil pit to work on the engine, and the crankshaft revolves once, messing him up fatally?
There is a liberty ship in San Pedro harbor, the S.S. Lane Victory, a floating museum now, and they have what they say is the engine that was in that movie. It isn’t their ship’s engine, but just an engine on display on one of the lower decks.
The Berkely, an old San Francisco ferryboat, in the San Diego Maritime Museum family of ships and boats, has a very nice triple-expansion steam engine display. It’s a regular field trip for our local Steampunk conventions. They’ve got it rigged up with an electric motor so the pistons rise and fall and the crankshaft turns. Impressive!
I remember the movie more dimly than the book, but the major story line I recall is that McQueen’s character gets in trouble because he isn’t willing to slough off his engineering duties onto Chinese crew members in favor of lounging around in snappy dress uniform (in the book, the entire crew enthusiastically gets into the rescue mission and the chance to fight Chinese rebels).
“a pawn to corporate overseas profits”? You’ve got to be kidding.
There’s a lot more on that aspect in the novel. The movie put more emphasis on the posturing patriotism to comment on Vietnam in 1966.
ETA: note that the US sailors on the Panay were killed defending oil tankers.
One of the very, very few movies I’ve ever seen that I thought were as good as the book.
Yes.
Very good novel. McQueen’s character wanted to do his job-not work to “show the flag”. When his only friend (“Frenchy”) falls in love with a (beautiful ) Chinese girl, he risks court martial to help him.
The CO of the "San Pablo"is the most repellent character-he is so devoted to “duty” that he is blind to the chaos he is unleashing. McQueen’s character dies in the end-shot to death in a lonely courtyard-for nothing.