Watch Escape to Burma For Free

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A better title would have been Escape IN Burma. A Technicolor jungle adventure, starring Barbara Stanwyck, as American teak forest queen Gwen Moore, and Robert Ryan, as American mining engineer/entrepreneur, Jim Brecan. Brecan had a 50-50 partnership with the prince of the local principality. They seemed to mostly mine precious gems, such as rubies. However, the prince was recently shot to death for unknown reason, and Brecan is the prime suspect. Perhaps robbery was a prime motive, as he took a sack of high value rubies with him when he fled into the jungle....... There is conflict over whether the justice system of the British or of the local Swabwa(ruler) should define the fate of Brecan. Cardigan, the British investigator chosen to bring in Brecan, wants a British trial, whereas the Swabwa wants to execute him without a trial, as he appears to be surely guilty. Alternatively, searchers have the right to shoot him dead if he resists arrest.......Brecan steals a horse from the local native policeman, and heads for Gwen's compound, in her teak forest. He claims he's Jim Martin. For some reason, Gwen takes an immediate liking to him, despite it not being clear why he came. Soon, she makes him her manager. When Cardigan shows up and accuses Martin of being Brecan, Gwen can't believe he's a murderer. Cardigan points to Brecan's luger pistol, noting that the bullet taken out of the prince was from a luger. Eventually, Brecan admits that he did shoot the prince, but that he felt he had to, as the prince was better off dead than alive. We would not get a more specific explanation until the finale. Brecan, Gwen , and Cardigan would continue to interact for most of the rest of the film. Gwen didn't want Brecan to kill Cardigan, as that would be a capital offense, should he be declared not guilty of killing the prince. Brecan escaped several times, either from Cardigan, or from thieves, only to be caught again. The Sawbwa's posse was also out looking for Brecan. I'll let you see the film, to find out what Brecan meant by "better off dead than alive". I will say that things turn out well for Brecan and Gwen, as Brecan's excuse, surprisingly, is accepted, both by the Sawbwa, and by Cardigan....... There are occasional shots of jungle animals, mostly Gwen's tame elephants, used in hauling teak logs to the river. However, at one point, her workers refused to venture into the forest, because they claimed the forest tiger spirit had killed a large elephant, and might kill them. Gwen and Brecan took their rifles on a tiger hunt. Gwen was nearly mauled by a tiger after she slipped and lost her rifle. But, Brecan came to the rescue.. Another scary moment is when a large black panther is following Gwen, on her horse......... About the primates that frequented inside and outside Gwen's compound: I saw 2 chimps. Of course, their natural range is confined to central Africa. An orangutan was evident. Again, it's not native to Burma(Myanmar). I also saw what looked like capuchins, native to South America. On the other hand, I didn't see any macaque monkeys, leaf monkeys, nor gibbon apes: all native to Myanmar........Historically, the Sawbwa were hereditary rulers of the semi-independent Shan States, of east Burma...... Apparently, the filming mostly took place in the World Animal Jungle Compound, in California........Robert Ryan's flat personality always bothers me. .......Again, this film is available at YouTube

Ace photographer John Alton contributes the main reason a movie enthusiast would want to watch this Escape to Burma (1955). Certainly Alton tried his best to make the film look interesting by continually fogging his lens with vines, lattices, trees and what-have-you, but the incredibly stupid script (the deathless dialogue includes this classic of instant informative advice: "The monsoon's coming this way. We'd better find shelter.") is something of a letdown.A selection of ham's delight performances also defeat all of photographer Alton's efforts. Oddly, the movie is currently available on a 5/10 VCI DVD that is not presented in SuperScope and is vastly inferior to the trailer in color saturation. On the same VCI disc is the more noirish "Appointment in Honduras" (1953) in which the players led by churlish Glenn Ford just manage to breathe a bit of life into an implausible screenplay. Solid action footage also helps.

The BBC aired this recently and as it was directed by super veteran Allan Dwan I happened to tape it.Ryan plays the typical US macho hero of the fifties, a fightin',shootin'(a Luger no less!) and kissin'guy. Mrs. Stanwyck is the owner of a plantation near Rangoon and she is not to be messed with. Third character is your run-of-the mill British, slightly repressed policeman, on the hunt for Ryan who supposedly has murdered the son of the local potentate.If you are a fan of Dwan's work better skip this one. The only good thing about it is the crisp clear color photography, the rest is pretty embarrassing. Clichéd would be putting it mildly. The script seems to be written in an afternoon and the same can be said of the movie itself.It is a bit unfair to Allan Dwan, as he made countless movies and still turned out some excellent stuff near the end of his very long career, as the classic marine epic "The Sands of Iwo Jima" and the sexy "Slightly Scarlet". So do not judge him on this silly jungle epic.

"He's made love to you, hasn't he?" snarls policeman Cardigan to teak plantation owner Gwen Martin. "Women always think they're sure of a man who makes love to them...but they never are." We're in Burma, and the object of Cardigan's anger and Gwen's love is Robert Brecan (Robert Ryan), accused of murdering the son of the Sawbwa. Brecan is on the run and meets Gwen (Barbara Stanwyck) by chance at her isolated plantation. The two fall almost instantly in love. But the Sawbwa wants the killer of his son so he can deal out justice the old-fashioned way...death by a thousand lashes. Cardigan (David Farrar) wants him to stand trial in Rangoon. Brecan, taciturn and tough, says he didn't kill the prince but won't say anything more. Justice finally is done, but only after we deal with a bag of rubies, happy natives, cute baby elephants, amusing chimps, murderous bandits and the plague. The movie has some of the most awful dialogue Stanwyck and Ryan ever had to deal with. "Why would a woman like you want to spend her life in a teak forest?" asks Ryan of Stanwyck. She thinks for a moment. "I like it...I've grown up with the elephants." "Just the same," he tells her, "it's a tough job for a woman." Stanwyck and Ryan had starred together three years earlier in Fritz Lang's Clash by Night. Perhaps they thought they'd get lucky again. Ryan sometimes looks as if he can't wait for the movie to end. Stanwyck, now 48, is an actress you pay attention to, but now she requires careful makeup and lighting. For David Farrar, a fine actor, this was just one of several ridiculous movies he made in Hollywood after he left England in 1951. There, he'd starred in Black Narcissus, The Small Back Room, Gone to Earth and other fineor interesting films. In Hollywood, he was stuck with things like The Black Shield of Falworth, The Sea Chase and Solomon and Sheba, usually in third billing. He called it quits when he was 54 and took up farming in South Africa. If you like jungle adventures, try the novels of Mark Derby, an English author long forgotten. He wrote during the Fifties and most of his stories take place in Southeast Asia. His books are all out of print, but can be found with persistence. Two of my favorites are Sun in the Hunter's Eyes and The Sunlit Ambush.