Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

It is a performances centric movie

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Some fine performances from stars Angie Dickinson, Gene Barry, and Nat King Cole are really wasted in this Sam Fuller film that really hasn't worn that well over the years. History has made China Gate very obsolete, a real Cold War relic.It's 1954 and the French Foreign Legion symbol of French Colonialism has met with humiliating defeat at Dienbienphu. Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh have taken over the north with the 17th parallel dividing the country. But they still threaten South Vietnam.A picked group of Legionaires among them Barry and Cole get a mission to blow up a secret ammo dump with enough to start things really going in the South. Angie Dickinson who is a character out of Terry And The Pirates , a mixed racial entertainer who has some history with another mixed racial Viet Minh commander Lee Van Cleef gets to lead the troops. But Angie has more history with Barry, she was married to him and bore him a son Warren Hsieh. Because of racism rather brutally expressed by Barry he rejected her and the kid. Still a misssion is a mission for these Legionaires soon to go to Algeria and try to keep the French in control. Let's say things get interesting for all concerned.Racism is dealt with squarely, colonialism is not in China Gate. Nat King Cole gives a strong performance as most definitely not a Stepin Fetchit character. But it got a bit much when he says he joined the Foreign Legion because he didn't get to kill enough Commies in Korea. Has this one not worn well.

China Gate 1957I caught Sam Fuller's 1957 war film CHINA GATE for the first time in a good 20 plus years. The DVD is finally available with its full black-and-white CinemaScope image intact. The old pan and scan VHS was terrible. While not the first Hollywood film to deal with the war in what was then French Indochina, this one comes across as a precursor to the American involvement in Vietnam.The leads are played here by Gene Barry and Angie Dickinson, with support by, Nat King Cole, Lee Van Cleef, Gerald Milton, James Hong, Paul Dubov and Marcel Dalio. The film is set in 1954 and the French are on the losing end of a string of battles with the Viet Minh. Gene Barry is an American Korean War vet who has returned to Vietnam to continue his fight against the Reds. As with most leads in a Fuller film, Barry is a typically conflicted hero. He volunteers to go on a mission for the French Foreign Legion to destroy Soviet-supplied ammunition dumps near the border with Red China. The expedition is to be guided in country by a Eurasian bar girl known far and wide as Lucky Legs (Angie Dickinson). Dickinson just happens to Barry's estranged wife as well the mother of his young son. The kicker here is that Barry could not handle that the boy looked Chinese, so Barry left to fight in Korea. Barry is still fighting because he hates the Reds, while Dickinson is going because the French government promised to help her get her son to America. The group slowly works its way north through the thick jungle past various Viet Minh outposts. Dickinson is known to most of the Red officers from her days running a popular bar. She has also brought along a generous supply of booze to ply the guards with. The group has a few close calls along the way losing some of their explosives and a few men. The group finally reaches the area where the Reds have stockpiled enormous amounts of arms and ammo. They are all stored in a large complex of caves. Of course Miss Dickinson happens to know the Red officer in charge, Lee Van Cleef. Cleef is more than happy to show Dickinson around after a few belts from one of Dickinson's bottles. During the journey, Barry has finally realized what a turd he was for leaving his wife and son while he went off to fight. He promises to make sure the boy makes it to the States. While Dickinson distracts several of the guards at the entrance of the cave complex, Barry and his men wire up the arms etc with explosives. Everything is wired and ready to go when the Reds discover the explosives. They cut the wire hooked to the detonator. Dickinson rushes back inside the cave and hooks up the wires again, blowing herself, the caves, and most of the Reds to kingdom come. Sam Fuller wrote and directed this film. His other work, include the excellent Korean War films, THE STEEL HELMET and FIXED BAYONETS. He also dabbled in film noir with, PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET, HOUSE OF BAMBOO and THE CRIMSOM KIMONO. His most well-known works are probably, THE BIG RED ONE and MERRILL'S MARUDERS. The film, though mostly studio bound, is quite sharp looking with plenty of nice blacks and greys. The man handling the cinematography is two time Oscar nominated, and one time winner, Joseph Biroc. Biroc worked between 1943 and 1987. He is well known to film noir fans for his work on, THE KILLER THAT STALKED NEW YORK, LOAN SHARK, WITHOUT WARNING, VICE SQUAD, THE GLASS WALL, DOWN THREE DARK STREETS, BENGAZI, THE GARMENT JUNGLE and CRY DANGER. His most well know film is IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

Very unusual for me to watch a war movie, but anything directed by Sam Fuller deserves consideration and I was intrigued with the casting that included, Angie Dickinson, Nat King Cole and Lee Van Clef. As it tuned out this was not as bad as it might have been, helped very much by the performances, Fuller achieves from his cast. Set in Vietnam, then Indochina, it features the last days of the French rule, when the Americans were seemingly the good guys dropping food parcels to the indigenous population. Nat King Cole, sings the title track twice and puts in a really convincing performance as one of the French rag bag group who trek through the jungle to carry out their wondrous mission. Mostly filmed on back lots, Fuller has interspersed stock footage to give a reasonable approximation of the location. Angie Dickinson is a real trouper and plays this very wide with much non PC banter with the Chinese, who she seems to keep happy with promise of brandy and sex. Lee Van Clef is a real surprise here (I thought he had always had that weathered look!) and helps to make the last quarter a bit more fun.

Samuel Fuller's China Gate isn't one to rush out to rent, but if you're already a fan of the director's it's a safe bet that most of his work will be at least brawny and entertaining, and even in the midst of heavy melodrama he can pack a bit of punch in the midst of the studio-set conventions. Make no mistake, this is a studio picture through and through, down to the studio locations (how much of it really is a jungle one might wonder, which isn't much), and the mix and match of real war-torn cityscapes ala Rossellini with stock footage of planes dropping supplies for the citizens. The only overall disappointing aspect is the slightly off ratio of powerful action and tough dialog- there's a little too much of the latter, and not as one of Fuller's most spot-on scripts in trying to wring out the unsentimental emotion, which backfires- as it's almost a minor work when compared to the real big guns, no pun intended, with respect to Fuller's war films. China Gate is simple melodrama, but when it does stick simply, and with Fuller's stylistic strengths and flashes of bravado, it works.One of the pleasantries of the picture is seeing the actors take to the roles, in typical Fullerian mode, as if it was all heart. Angie Dickinson, in one of her first performances, is a hot little number that has just the right, well, 'something' to keep her along with the other male parts, as she plays a hard-bitten mother named 'Lucky Legs' who is the only one who has the right contacts and repore with the Ho Chi-Mon that she can get a small military team through enemy lines. Her strengths are poised against Gene Barry, her once husband (still technically is, thanks to a lovey-dovey scene in the latter part of the movie), who is a bigot and seems to have had all sympathy for most people drained away. He does, however, gain it back by the time the big climax comes, which maybe isn't too far of a stretch considering the many scenes where he and Lucky Legs get a little more intimate (as close as possible during the 'code' anyway). The good news is Fuller cast them very well for their chemistry on screen, as they are totally opposed at first, and then gradually get closer and closer, her beauty with his scruffy face, each hard-bitten by times spent in war and communist locales.Meanwhile, Fuller's got a wild card with Nat King Cole, who not only wonderfully sings an unusually placed song (right before all the men head out on their mission through the Vietnam jungle) but is an unexpectedly touching actor. He goes through some subtle looks at times when asked too many questions from a fellow German soldier in the group, is cool and dead-pan when having to face Sgt. Brock, and plays it perfectly when he is in possible enemy fire range and steps on a spike in the ground, keeping himself mute with his face totally in horror. There's also a good scene with a man who gets wounded on a rocky ridge, with his last minutes not stepping into platitudes but simply allowing a sort of quietly sad cross-cutting between the others looking down at the poor solider seen in a painful close-up. Although there's a fairly bad scene with a French foreign legion guy (I think foreign legion) who tells a story accompanied by a sound effect of a whistle, and the dialog between the men in the less plot-dense scenes is just average Fuller, it's great to see a part for Lee Van Cleef as the heel with all the bombs and explosives in the cave, and the climax is a good, if not astounding, wallop.An obscure early dip into what would become the most insane debacle of Westerners fighting the 'other' halfway across the world (as of then), China Gate is usually exciting and tightly executed, and if it doesn't have the same pulp attitude that Fuller has when he's working full throttle, it never-the-less attains a quality that speaks of the BANG of a headline, telling the story all in one bold swoop, however easy to tell.