SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 13 December 1947 by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Palace: 25 December 1947. U.S. release: 27 December 1947. U.K. release: 25 April 1949. Australian release: 22 July 1948. 11,844 feet. 131½ minutes.SYNOPSIS: American engineer in the Andes falls for the boss' daughter.NOTES: Shooting from early February to early May 1947. Negative cost: $3,209,000. Net loss after worldwide distribution: $1,035,000.COMMENT: Hard to believe in that budget - the largest ever expended by RKO to that time! There's precious little to show for it up there on the screen. The only worthwhile bit of action occurs right at the climax - and that is obviously contrived with miniatures! A couple of earlier explosions were cheated the same way. Location expenses were not heavy, as most of the picture was very obviously lensed in the studio. We can only surmise that the actors, the writers and the director were grossly overpaid.Wayne has the sort of tough, superficial, turnabout role he usually plays with a breezily unassuming credibility. Here his performance is so strained, so artificial his characterization is simply unbelievable. However, Duke is not alone - the same goes for the rest of the cast. Hardwicke can do nothing with the empty posturings the script hands him. Though it's always a pleasure to listen to his sonorous voice and it's a joy to find him in so large a role, what a pity the writers couldn't find him anything exciting to say or dramatic to do. All they have done is to obscure and haze his motivations so that his actions seem utterly incredible. If her part were larger, Judith Anderson would be in the same fix. Laraine Day comes out of the film best. She is certainly the player the photographers have lavished all their attentions upon. Radiantly lit, exquisitely gowned and made up, she projects an alluring luminosity that stays in the mind's eye long after the rest of this silly film is forgotten.It says much for the quality of the support cast to mention that Paul Fix and Harry Woods stand favorably in the forefront. Gleason is bombastically irritating (fortunately he is removed to hospital for a large part of his innings) and Quinn's role is so piffling as to seem almost non-existent.Of course - aside from the writers - the man to blame for the whole debacle is Richard Wallace. Never has direction been so painstakingly dull, so studiously lethargic, so blatantly disinterested.Tycoon provides a lavish feast of colorful hues for the eyes, nothing for the brain, and tintinnabulation for the ears!OTHER VIEWS: Aside from its lustrous Technicolor photography - Laraine Day never looked lovelier - Tycoon is an astonishingly dull, undistinguished effort which wastes a large amount of talent and money on the part of all concerned in its making. As for the time and patience of those forced to view this pleasantly picturesque but ploddingly banal photoplay . . .

classicsoncall So I'm thinking to myself as the story approaches it's dramatic conclusion - here's John Wayne engineering a locomotive to the middle of a hundred yard high trestle, presumably to provide more stability in the face of a raging flood heading it's way. Do I have that right? Turns out it was a bad decision, with the whole train toppling over in the storm, and the bridge's center span lost as well. So does Johnny Munroe (Wayne) get fired and run out of town? Instead, he makes up with the boss (Cedric Hardwicke), his band of construction jocks become the new board of directors, and Munroe goes on his honeymoon with the boss's daughter (Laraine Day). This just doesn't make sense on so many levels.One can also question some of the events leading up to the finale as well. There was the initial decision to go through the mountain with a railroad instead of a bridge. Johnny Munroe was proved right on that score, but at what cost? It seems to me that Frederic Alexander wasted more money following bad advice from his board than by listening to the crew doing the job. Anthony Quinn had a rather dubious role in all of this as basically Alexander's yes man with little regard for his own instincts in fulfilling the project.Another thing that struck me was that as Wayne got older, the romantic lead in his films remained a girl in her twenties. As another example, you have Gail Russell opposite Wayne in 1947's "Angel and the Badman". Here, Laraine Day's character is mentioned as being twenty years old. She's quite attractive in her role, with wardrobe changes that would get her pegged as a fashionista today. With that in mind, this is one of the few pictures you'll see in which John Wayne sports a suit, and a white one at that! He did it some years earlier in 1931's "His Private Secretary", perhaps the only two times in his movie career that he might have done so.So even though this film is panned pretty much across the board, there are some worthwhile things to find if you tune in and pay attention. It's just that most of them don't have anything to do with the story itself. Loyal John Wayne fans at least should take a look, just as little Chico (Fernando Alvarado) stayed true to the big lug through thick and thin.

MartinHafer This movie provided little satisfaction when I watched it. No, it wasn't BAD, really, but it was certainly several notches below the quality you'd expect from one of his films. For example, while this is a color movie, every print I have seen looks very grainy and cheap--so it's very interesting that another reviewer comment on how good it looked. Maybe I just didn't get to see the right print. Also, the dialog is, at times, really crappy and riddled with clichés--like it was meant for just another B-movie and not a star whose career was definitely on the upswing as Wayne's was. And finally, the plot just didn't engage me--perhaps because there just wasn't that much action or suspense. Without the Japanese or Commies or Indians to fight, it just falls a little flat.

sol- Laraine Day and John Wayne are well cast, each with their share of strong moments, however these moments are too few, and in between the film is rather dull and lacking in excitement. The storyline and character relationships are predictable: it is all very typical and riding on clichés. The extreme length does not help either, but there is one aspect of this film that is certainly very good: the art direction, captured well in Technicolor, is simply beautiful. In a way it is a shame that this film flopped because it otherwise may have had the chance of an Oscar nomination in the art direction field. However, it is not very good overall and only arguably adequate viewing, so it is not quite worth watching the film just to admire the sets. Perhaps worth a look for Day or Wayne die-hard followers though.