American director Raoul Walsh bringing Grace Bradley with him did this Gaumont
British film as an American style buddy film. Also coming over was Wallace Ford,
but in his case he was returning to the land of his birth.
In Ford's case he's over from the USA fleeing from a murder rap, a crime he didn't
do. He's joined the British army and in their basic training buddies it up with young John Mills, then a rising name in the cinema across the pond. The two of
them are rivals for Anna Lee. Bradley however comes across to Great Britain
as well as part of an entertainment troop and she knows Ford from back in
the states.
As the director of What Price Glory, Walsh was the guy who brought us the
male buddy film and a lot of that camaraderie is in O.H.M.S. The action
sequences in China where the British army saves a British enclave on the
frontier is really well done. Ford and Mills have the proper chemistry to pull
off a Captain Flagg/Sergeant Quirt of the lower ranks type act.
Nice action film, more of what you would see in the American cinema than the
British, but is done well indeed.