"ROGUES' REGIMENT"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 522, 24 June 1949, Page 20

"ROGUES' REGIMENT"

(Unriversal-International!) CIGARETTE-CASE pawned on the Piraeus and a rose sapphire hocked in Harbin convince the Ametican Army Intelligence Service that Martin Brunner, the only top-flight Nazi to escape capture, is on his way to join the French Foreign Legion in Indo-China. (It’s obviously M... B.... who's meant, but one.must be careful of the law of ‘libel, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely co-in-cidental.) Anyway, they send along Dick (Deadpan) Powell to join up too, find M.B., and put the finger on him. In. Saigon Mr. Powell meets a beautiful French girl who is having an affair with a phoney Dutchman when she is not singing to German members of the French Foreign Legion in an IndoChinese cabaret, but it transpires that the girl (Marta Toren-and quite an eyeful) is really a French Government agent, while the Dutchman is in fact a German engaged in selling illicit tommy-guns to the Vietnam forces... do you follow me so far? Set down coldly in black and white it mey sound horribly confused, but hardened tuans who

have been around Saigon before with Alan Ladd will recognise the atmosphere. The promise of violence hangs like a thundercloud over the film until Mr. Powell comes to gtips with his quarry, gives him the old one-two, and retires to the States with the girl. I’ve seen melodramas that were worse, but I’ve seen Dick Powell in several films that were much better. And I dislike seeing a reasonably good actor being typed as a genteel thug. One doesn’t mind Van Johnson stripping off his singlet once in every picture, as a recog-nition-signal, but there’s no need for Powell to beat someone into insensibility every time he appears before the cameras.