The Sand Pebbles (1966)

It took some time to get going but 'The Sand Pebbles' is a really excellent movie, with some legitimate surprises and risk taking, a mature adventure film.  A re-teaming of 'The Great Escape' co-stars Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough, based on the best selling novel by Mnt Home, Idaho native Richard McKenna, and very ably directed by Robert Wise, it is the story of  the crew of an American gun boat patrolling Chinese river waters in that murky imperialist period between the fall the emperor and the rise of Mao's communist state. The moral complexity of the piece for a big tent mid 60's American studio release is a little awe inspiring. Though ostensibly a McQueen vehicle it is Richard Crenna who steals this movie in what's got to be his best performance, remarkably subtitle. Also featuring a 20 year old Candice Bergen as an American teacher. Oh yeah and McQueen's character is said, more then once, to be from rural Utah, I wonder if an implied lapsed Mormon angle was intentional. Filmed in Hong Kong and Taiwan. ****