needed special permission of production code to talk about drug smuggling made during Powell's 'tough guy' years opium trade set 1935
"To The Ends Of The Earth" was a film made during the period after Dick Powell transitioned from the pretty-boy crooner in light-weight films to a more world-weary and middle aged leading man. I generally loved these films, as Powell's characters were often incredibly cynical...and he pulled it off very well. This one, while showing SOME of this new sort of Powell character, sadly, isn't up to the quality of his best performances of the era...though it is a decent time-passer.
The film begins in the mid-1930s with an insanely graphic and troubling scene. Treasury Department Commissioner, Mike Barrows (Powell), is on a boat in the San Francisco area that is trailing a boat full of smugglers. In a sick and desperate act, the captain of the boat being pursued decides to have his men toss their illegal cargo overboard instead of being caught with it...and you see dozens of Chinese migrant workers chained together being tossed into the sea to their deaths! Barrows witnesses this and is horrified...and vows to see this captain apprehended. But they are now in international waters and the boat escapes.
Later, there is a lead that the captain MIGHT be in China and so Barrows travels there to hunt for the scum-bag. However, it soon begins clear that these Chinese workers were not what he originally thought. They were, in fact, slave laborers used by folks in the narcotics trade to plant and harvest poppies and soon he finds himself investigating the heroin trade.
While all this sounds very exciting, the film's pacing wasn't great and the story went to too many locations and had too many characters. Normally I don't see this as a problem but I found that the pacing and story were not especially well done. I think a lot of this was made more obvious because too often instead of DOING anything, the characters talked and talked and talked. Overall, not a bad film but one that was surprisingly flat at times.
"To The Ends Of The Earth" was a film made during the period after Dick Powell transitioned from the pretty-boy crooner in light-weight films to a more world-weary and middle aged leading man. I generally loved these films, as Powell's characters were often incredibly cynical...and he pulled it off very well. This one, while showing SOME of this new sort of Powell character, sadly, isn't up to the quality of his best performances of the era...though it is a decent time-passer.
The film begins in the mid-1930s with an insanely graphic and troubling scene. Treasury Department Commissioner, Mike Barrows (Powell), is on a boat in the San Francisco area that is trailing a boat full of smugglers. In a sick and desperate act, the captain of the boat being pursued decides to have his men toss their illegal cargo overboard instead of being caught with it...and you see dozens of Chinese migrant workers chained together being tossed into the sea to their deaths! Barrows witnesses this and is horrified...and vows to see this captain apprehended. But they are now in international waters and the boat escapes.
Later, there is a lead that the captain MIGHT be in China and so Barrows travels there to hunt for the scum-bag. However, it soon begins clear that these Chinese workers were not what he originally thought. They were, in fact, slave laborers used by folks in the narcotics trade to plant and harvest poppies and soon he finds himself investigating the heroin trade.
While all this sounds very exciting, the film's pacing wasn't great and the story went to too many locations and had too many characters. Normally I don't see this as a problem but I found that the pacing and story were not especially well done. I think a lot of this was made more obvious because too often instead of DOING anything, the characters talked and talked and talked. Overall, not a bad film but one that was surprisingly flat at times.