Rent North West Frontier (1959)

Good Old Fashioned British Film - North West Frontier review by RP

Kenneth More was the epitome of the English film star. This sort of film is politically incorrect and as anti-woke as you like,. Great film! They do not make them like that any more!!!!!

Ripping Yarn. - North West Frontier review by Steve

Like J.Lee Thompson's Ice Cold in Alex a year earlier, this brings together a loose alliance of uprooted mavericks who travel in ramshackle transport across a war ravaged country with a traitor on board. This time it's British India in 1905, and an army officer (Kenneth More) must get an infant Hindu prince to a safety by train, as north-west India spills into civil war.

And he's accompanied by a party of diverse civilians, with Lauren Bacall as a proto-feminist in her best post-Bogart role. Herbert Lom is typecast as the saturnine villain. IS Johar plays the obsequious Indian train driver as a dated stereotype, but he is charismatic, self deprecating, and ultimately a hero. And then there's a huge cast of extras.

This is an epic adventure which fills the magnificent CinemaScope with spectacular action. There is some thematic talk of colonialism and religious conflict which strays into clumsy editorialising. But this is broken up by incredibly suspenseful cliff hangers, particularly the nerve shredding crossing of a blown up railway bridge...

Spain effectively stands in for occupied India. While some of the attitudes are of their time, there is quite a critical attitude to the British Empire, compared with the Hollywood Raj films of the thirties. Kenneth More makes a dashing Ripping Yarns style hero. While maybe too verbose for some, it's a thrilling and good looking British blockbuster.