High Road to China - Imprint Films #532

It’s easy to cast Brian G. Hutton’s adaptation of Jon Cleary’s novel as a simple Indiana Jones clone. That’s even easier to do when you have tall Tom "Almost Indy" Selleck standing as the haunted, heavy-drinking, high-flying ace O’Malley while Bess Armstrong steps in as the plucky, headstrong Eve Tozer. Hell, the film is even a period piece, casting the action back to the 1920s. Lacking any Nazis, the similarities between High Road to China and Raiders of the Lost Ark end at the character dynamics. Tossing away this film as a mere clone would be a disservice to one hell of a great 1980s adventure film! 

Our plot takes off when High Society dame Eve Tozer learns that one of her wayward father Bradley Tozer's (Wilford Brimley) former partners, Bentik (Robert Morely), is out to sue for a death certificate and take over the vast business empire. That’d mean Eve’s dosciety money tap would run dry. Now she needs a pilot willing to risk life and limb to help find her father - O’Malley is just the man to do it, for the right price, and when he’s sober enough to fly. 

Up front and true, High Road to China is an honest nostalgia bomb for me. The film came out a year after I was born, and as long as I remember watching movies, I’ve never known a time in my life without it. In the days when my Dad would rent movies and record a copy, this was one of the few we actually had a legit retail VHS copy. I can’t imagine how much my Dad spent on this back in 1983/1984 dollars, but it was worth it. We ran that tape into the ground. 

I love this film because it’s just a grand adventure out to entertain a ready audience. It’s a splashy production, shot throughout Yugoslavia, featuring some impressive aerial photography (and one slick dogfight sequence) with an air of the exotic. Sure, the story may be a tad thin, but the film’s success is with the characters. Selleck and Armstrong are dynamite together. Armstrong may have had to have super-high-heels and stand on soapboxes to get in an eyeline with Selleck, but it’s their natural chemistry that keeps this adventure aloft. 

Along for the ride is the always great Jack Weston as O’Malley’s mechanic Struts. While he largely delivers the comic relief, he’s never played absurdly; instead, he’s the home base for a friend with a sad past. Then we have a wonderfully boisterous Wilford Brimley as Bradley, playing his part as a scruffy Teddy Roosevelt adventurer out to help the little guy in big lopsided battles. If there’s a weak spot for the film it’s sadly with Robert Morely’s turn as Bentik. That’s not his fault; it’s the character he was handed, but his interplay with his frantic minion, played by Timothy Bateson, borders on absurdist slapstick in a film that doesn’t need that kind of energy. They undercut the excitement and suspense of the journey. I dare say, there’s probably a cut of the film that works even better without that bizarre tone shift . 

But if comical villains is the only real thing I nag on a film for, that’s not too bad. High Road to China might not be the greatest adventure film of the 1980s, lord knows there were more than a few good ones not starring Harrison Ford, but it was a grand feature all the same. There’s drama, there’s excitement, there’s genuine humor, there's romance, and more importantly, the film’s got a good heart. Also, it’s got one mother of a great John Barry score to fly away with. 

Vital Disc Stats: The HD Blu-ray 
Thanks to Imprint Films, High Road to China takes off as the 532nd film in their vast archive. A single-disc release, the film is pressed on a Region Free BD50 disc and comes housed in a clear case with an alternate artwork slipcase. The disc loads to a static image main menu with standard navigation options.

After the lackluster 2012 Hen’s Tooth Blu-ray issued here in the States, I was really hopeful this film would have undergone some significant restoration effort for a more definitive A/V experience. While that hasn’t exactly happened for this Imprint Films release, we are at least getting something slightly better than before. This looks to be the same 1.78:1 master - again, the wrong aspect ratio; it should be 1.85:1 - but the larger file size offers up a stronger bitrate so fine details come through a little more cleanly, and fine film grain is a little more natural looking. I’m not sure where down the line this occurred, but the color balance is a little healthier; gamma seems to be notched a little more in the right direction. Whites aren’t quite as nuked as our domestic disc, and color saturation is improved a tad offering slightly healthier skin tones. Black levels are still a bit thick, depth is still a little subdued, but this is better than what we had here before. The film still deserves a full restoration effort; it’s a lavish production that’d look amazing in 4K, but I can’t deny credit where it’s due even if its incremental. 

For the audio side of the show, Imprint gives us an LPCM 2.0 stereo track that is a little healthier than the DTS-HD MA 2.0 track we got here for the domestic Blu-ray. The first thing I noticed was that during the opening credits, the John Barry score didn’t quite sound so shrill when it hit high notes. Likewise, whenever Bess Armstrong gets annoyed and her voice pitches higher, her voice doesn’t have that tinny quality anymore. There are other examples of the slight difference in pitch between releases throughout. Similar to the video differences, these improvements may be slight, but they’re appreciable.

Where this release flies some small loops around our domestic disc is with the bonus features selection. We didn’t get anything here domestically beyond the trailer. Now we’ve got an interesting new Steve Mitchell audio commentary that’s a solid listen to give us something to sink our teeth into. It's a solo commentary, but he fills the time nicely with plenty of trivia and appreciation for what the film was shooting at. After that we have two archival interviews with Bess Armstrong and Jack Weston that are worth taking a gander at. They're brief, but they’re a good 13 minutes of combined content about the film. 

• Audio Commentary featuring Steve Mitchell
• Interview with Bess Armstrong (SD 6:56)
• Interview with Jack Weston (SD 6:07)
• Trailer

As I mentioned above, I freely admit that High Road to China is something of a nostalgia bomb for me. It throws me right back into movie nights when I was a kid and we’d pull this off the shelf for another viewing - and it’s incredibly entertaining every time. But removed from those memories, this is still a very entertaining picture. Action, adventure, romance, humor, it’s got it all, and it comes to life with a great cast. Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong are the dynamic duo of this film, with notable on-screen chemistry. Slick direction, beautiful photography, a great score, wonderful actors, an engaging plot - what more could you ask for a night’s entertainment?

Well, we could ask for a new restoration of High Road to China, that’s for sure. This current HD master has been hanging around for some time and it’s a film that absolutely deserves an overhaul from the ground up, but at least this release offers a nominal improvement over what we saw here in the States. It’s not much, but it’s a notch in the right direction. Making this release the best overall package I've seen so far on disc, we get a small but welcome selection of extra features with a solid commentary and a pair of old interviews. It’s a frustrating release because I love the film so much I wanted to call it Recommended, but as is, with the current A/V package, even if it is better, I can only say it’s Worth A Look 

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