Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Purely Joyful Movie!

disgusting, overrated, pointless

Absolutely amazing

*Spoiler/plot- Soldier of Fortune, 1955. A wife's journalist husband who was just imprisoned behind the red Chinese curtain goes to Hong Kong to get an adventurer to help her in her task to find the husband and to get him back.*Special Stars- Clark Cable, Susan Hayward, Michael Rennie, Gene Barry.*Theme- Persistance is the key to success.*Trivia/location/goofs- Shoot at 20th century Fox studios and Hong Kong. Ms. Hayward was under court order to not leave the US due to a pending divorce matter.*Emotion- This film was enjoyable to watch, but the story seems very stilted due to the lack of character development of the supporting cast's roles.*Based On- A best seller and the Cold War era.

I agree with just about everything Greg said about the film. Perhaps I am wistful about the old Hollywood and the way movies were made back then. The teaming of Gable and Hayward is perfect. She could hold her own against any male lead. Gable was still in his prime and chews up the scenery. Susan Hayward, so strong and yet so vulnerable, was elegant in her circa 1954 wardrobe. The photography is splendid with so many great Hong Kong locations. It reminds me of "Love is a Many Splendored Thing," also from 1955. But, as Greg pointed out, it is the majestic, sweeping score by Hugo Friedhofer that lingers in my mind. I want that soundtrack! Overall, I loved the movie. It was exciting and had a Hollywood happy ending. They just don't make them like they used to!

The 50s was Hollywood's probably worst-ever decade, the highlights of that period very ironically being mostly low-budget, so-bad-they're-good sci-fi and monster movies. Even though SOF isn't by any means a brilliant exception to the rule, it does offer something that a number of 50s big-studio movies did have: beautiful women (in this case one woman) and great Technicolor visuals. Susan Hayward has never looked better: she is quite simply stunning. The coastal night scenes are visually impeccable. The story isn't too cheesy for that period and refreshingly presents communists as the bad guys. (The movie was made post-McCarthy-clean-up so there was a pleasant hiatus that lasted several years regarding left-wing propaganda films that glorified communists or at least tried to soften the brutality of such regimes.) Clark Gable, if a little old, in the lead role can't hurt either. Compare 40s/50s beauties like Liz Taylor, Olivia de Havilland, and Susan Hayward to modern-day wrecks like Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz. Sad...

This is one of those early Twentieth Century Fox CinemaScope potboilers where the studio sent (most of) the cast and crew to actual locations and took full DeLuxe Color advantage of places that most of the potential audience would never visit in real life. So, the bustling and already festooned-with-highrises city of Hong Kong is the principal setting for the jumping-off point of the plot. It's pretty obvious that Gable is actually there in Hong Kong for a few of the shots but Susan Hayward, embroiled in a custody battle after her divorce from Lex Barker, didn't dare leave the U.S., or her chances of caring for her children by that marriage might have been scotched. Therefore long shots and a few medium ones of her were cleverly arranged with a double and she performs all of her closeups, et cetera, safely ensconced on the Fox soundstages in West Los Angeles and against some rather good back projections.Gable and Hayward are a pretty good team and Michael Rennie lends his usual elegant support. Gene Barry has a rather thankless role as Susan's eventually rejected husband, and the supporting cast, including the Asians appearing as various Chinese, are all convincing under Edward Dmytryk's workmanlike direction.For me the real stars, however, are Leo Tover's excellent use of the CinemaScope lenses and, once again, Hugo Friedhofer's atmospheric score. In my opinion, no other Hollywood master of the full orchestral enhancement was able to cue the audience and call up some real emotion with so few bars of music. This film is a sterling example of his art. Just check out the closing few moments of the film. He could send you out of the theater convinced you'd seen something even better than what you had actually viewed!