Though it was based upon a bestseller (by Richard McKenna, whose work was adapted for the screen by Robert Anderson) and runs three hours, one waits in vain for something in Robert Wise's mammoth adventure saga "The Sand Pebbles" to be meaningful, to hit a nerve. There were comparisons made at the time between the picture and the Vietnam War, yet it's the same type of travelogue/seafaring yarn which Hollywood was churning out ten years prior (with Steve McQueen in for Montgomery Clift, perhaps, and Simon Oakland in for Ernest Borgnine). It's Shanghai in 1926, and China is a crazy-quilt of chaos; naval engineer McQueen keeps his vessel running under the strict leadership of Captain Collins (a one-note Richard Crenna). He also has a predilection for sensitive prostitutes, but eventually falls under the spell of a schoolteacher from Vermont (Candice Bergen, batting her eyelashes to let us know she's a virgin). Screenwriter Anderson should not get plaudits for the things in the picture which do work (that credit should go to McQueen, who carries the film). Anderson's arduous expository dialogue merely makes the movie seem longer; in the first seven minutes, we get a dinner-table scene wherein two opposing political views of China are heatedly expressed...thirty minutes later, Collins bawls out engineer Jake Holman while giving him a double-helping of political rhetoric. It's an epic for simpletons. ** from ****
Review of The Sand Pebbles
