Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

diana-2 Just one correction. The Japanese did not surrender unconditionally. We accepted a conditional surrender because Russia declared war on Japan in August 1945 and would have taken it over if we had not accepted their surrender and occupied Japan.A little-known fact, I'm afraid. If it had been an unconditional surrender, Emperor Hirohito would have been tried as a war criminal.Most people think that Japan surrendered unconditionally, due to atomic bombs, but they did not.As far as the movie is concerned, I've never found this movie to be very interesting. It makes too much of the Chinese resistance without showing much of what they did. The movie is too "talky". Katharine Hepburn is totally miscast and looks foolish.

MartinHafer I just finished skimming through the reviews for this film and noticed that the first one actually had the gall to give this movie a score of 10! A 10 would place this film in the illustrious company as other great films such as GONE WITH THE WIND, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES or GIGI--surely it's an insult to these other great films to compare DRAGON SEED to them in any favorable way! Other than the fact they are movies, I just don't see any other rational comparison.So why did I give the film the ridiculously low score of 2? Well, it features the very worst job of casting of any film--with the possible exception of THE CONQUERER (with John Wayne as 'Gengis Khan' and Susan Hayward as a Mongol princess). In DRAGON SEED, Katherine Hepburn (red haired and possessing a very prim and proper New England accent) and Walter Huston are among the cast playing Chinese people!! Now it was unfortunately common in the 30s and 40s to have such parts played by Westerners but at least some had the ability to almost carry it off well. Heck, Warner Oland and Sidney Toler were MUCH closer to being believable as Chinese (detective 'Charlie Chan') than either Huston or Hepburn!!! As for the rest of the story, it's a relatively dull and uninspiring Pearl Buck story with none of the impact or style as THE GOOD EARTH--a fine film from a decade earlier (despite the all Anglo cast once again). Instead, it's an anti-Japanese film made to promote the war effort in the Pacific.By the way, as a bit of trivia, the red haired Agnes Morehead deserves special recognition, as she not only played a Chinese lady in this film but Genghis Khan's mother in THE CONQUERER--proving that horrendously stupid casting can be infectious.Also, for more fun casting decisions featuring the most ridiculous Westerners playing Asians, try watching Edward G. Robinson in THE HATCHET MAN--an amazingly good film despite having 'Little Caesar' pretending to be Chinese. Other odd ones (humorous because they were so very, very offensive) were Marlon Brando in TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON and Mickey Rooney in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. I swear to you, all these movie references are true--Hollywood was THIS out of touch and the public actually went to these films in droves!

holly-103 I also ran across this movie while early morning channel surfing. Did not see the entire movie, unfortunately. The plot is well developed and I found myself caring about what happened to these characters but the casting of white Americans as Asian folks was almost too distracting. My favorite characters were Ling Tan and his wife; the interaction with their grandchild really tugged at the heartstrings! Kate Hepburn as a Chinese peasant, Jade, was the worst; Agnes Moorehead was a hoot! Now I really want to find this movie again, since I missed the very beginning then had to leave for work and missed the end. I also would like to read the book now as the only Pearl S. Buck I have read is The Good Earth.

tjonasgreen This movie is just as terrible as you've always heard it is. But it has a few points of interest, especially for those who want to revisit the peculiar politics of the WWII era. At the same time that Japan was invading China, DRAGON SEED depicted the Japanese as ravening monsters while glamorizing the Chinese Communist guerrillas fighting them. War made for strange bedfellows and just a couple of years later, portraying Communists in a sympathetic light would have been a dangerous, career-killing thing to do.The film itself has all the production values one imagines MGM would bring to bear on a best-selling novel by Pearl Buck. And as a piece of wartime propaganda, every opportunity is taken to make the Japanese seem like inhuman monsters -- indeed, the way that violence (especially sexual violence) toward women is portrayed here is surprisingly harsh and lurid for this period, and would only have been considered acceptable because it demonized The Enemy during wartime.Criticizing old movies for being racially insensitive and politically incorrect is self-defeating. We are all products of our time and place. However regrettable it seems now, it was inconceivable in the Hollywood of 1944 that Asian actors would have been used in lead roles. And a few film critics and writers of the time criticized the film for this, finding it as ridiculous as we do. From our own vantage point it is always useful for us to revisit the mores of another time even when we are appalled by them so that we can see how far we've come. And how far we still need to go. We can't turn back the clock and redo the past, so instead of reviling it, let's learn from it.Is there entertainment value here? Sure, some, though in many ways this is a stilted pot-boiler and more of a political tract than a movie. And there is one good sequence, though it is as contrived and melodramatic as something in a bad silent film. Katharine Hepburn (giving one of the worst performances of her career) is holding poison that she hopes to use against her turncoat brother-in-law. Instead, she finds herself in the kitchen of his mansion where a banquet for the Japanese invading army is being prepared. While pretending to be a woman willing to barter her body to the Japanese, she looks for an opportunity to poison the feast. The tension and cross-cutting as the attempts and the reversals pile up is fun -- the only really memorable scene in this very phony picture. Aline McMahon got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and though she is the only one in DRAGON SEED who suggests a real, feeling human being, one imagines she would have given the same performance as a Russian, Greek or French peasant -- it is a generic 'ethnic' performance, and as full of baloney as everything else in this curious movie, so much a relic of it's time.