Set on a US gunboat patrolling the Yangtze River in 1926, this blend of action and melodrama was something of a surprise hit in its day, earning itself no fewer than eight Oscar nominations (although it won none). Part of the reason for its success can be found in its thinly veiled apology for American intervention in Vietnam, but there are some more enduring plus points, too. Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough both turn in pleasing performances and Joseph MacDonald's cinematography is outstanding. The romances are rather contrived but, to director Robert Wise's credit, this long film (which has been released in several versions of varying length) never feels like a slog.

Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat USS San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the 'rice-bowl' system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.