HIGH ROAD TO CHINA —old-fashioned rousing adventure with few surprises and no subtlety; still decent escapist entertainment. Boorish critics trounced this mercilessly, making comparisons to Raiders Of The Lost Ark and taking out undue spite on Tom Selleck.

A former air ace takes a spoiled heiress on an action-filled flight into 1920s China to find her father. Stops in Afghanistan and Nepal are thrown in for the exotic hell of it, and the eventual body-count of bandits, warring tribesmen and pursuing killers runs into the hundreds.*

$20,000,000 gave the 1983 production a rich look in costuming, cinematography, crowd scenes and action, and the aerial sequences are exhilarating. John Barry’s score is pretty enough, but it could have done with a bit more zip-factor.

Bess Armstrong is cute as the snooty and spunky damsel, even though there are times when the character grates a tad. Jack Weston is a kick as usual, but most of the laughs come from Wilford Brimley, who hams like crazy.  Selleck makes a viable hero in the old-style mode, with enough self-kidding to make the outrageous daring easy to swallow.

No classic this, but action-packed and generally fun, undeserving of the drubbing heaped on it. Directed by Brian G. Hutton, filmed in Yugoslavia, running 105 minutes. With Robert Morley, Brian Blessed and Cassandra Gava, it barrel-rolled the naysayers and socked $50,000,000 worldwide, #27 for the year.

• *Use the p.c. elsewhere, as the mow-down of extras gleefully escalates to such a point at the finale that you’ll either whoop or huff in disgust, depending on your regard for the lives of ‘bad guys’.  I lived with it. The guilt is crippling. “Well, they should’na run…”
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