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Resistance begins in the classroom, cf. La Chinoise, the Chungking teacher (Anna May Wong) presides in untranslated Mandarin before leading her students on a singalong of "Yankee Doodle." A coded message from the toy peddler alerts her to the mission ahead. "We sent two men. They both died. We have in mind to send a woman." A Japanese bombardment empties out the school but for a lone tyke, who doffs dunce cap and enjoys the excitement until perilous stock footage wipes him out, a thrifty set-piece to remind the spy what she's fighting for. "Enemies take on strange faces," she finds out at a Lashio monastery with a busload of stranded suspects. The monk (Noel Madison) operates a radio behind his Buddhist shrine, the English blueblood (Leslie Denison) keeps a lethal bodyguard (Frank Lackteen), the shady loudmouth (Dan Seymour) seeks a profitable angle. The Yank at the wheel (Nedrick Young) is cagy about his wartime reasons: "I like rice." Burma Road by way of PRC backlot, Joseph H. Lewis dresses it up with a camera so supple that his young extras cannot help staring at its movements. (A signature dash of mise en scène cranes down from a bus station sign to ground level behind a rickshaw wheel.) Wong because it's "Boule de Suif" (Shanghai Express), with the culprit's comeuppance delivered by the salt of the earth wielding pickaxes. "Well, we Americans are kind of funny. We like to hear both sides of the argument before we decide which one we're gonna take." Fernandéz runs with the setup in Río Escondido. With Teala Loring, Dennis Moore, Connie Leon, and Richard Loo. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |