This film is a swashbuckling "Captain Blood" style, in which the immortal heartthrob Errol Flynn plays a British officer who infiltrates a pirate den to undermine his coastal defenses and allow an English attack. Flynn is in a comfortable role and provides us with a performance within what we could expect from him. Next to him are Maureen O'Hara and Anthony Quinn, the latter in the role of the villain. Quinn had a relatively contained performance, despite his character being a bully. O'Hara seeks to establish himself in a middle ground between the feminine sensuality and the strength and personality that her character demanded. I don't know to what extent this effort was fruitful, but I believe the actress could have done better. In addition, being a period film and being piracy a strongly masculine activity, her character lacks verisimilitude. Worse than that is just Alice Kelley, in a character very stereotyped and loaded with subliminal sexual allusions. In short: its a film that satisfies swashbuckling connoisseurs but is far from the greatness of other films of this genre.
Review of Against All Flags
Against All Flags
(1952)
A decent Flynn in a movie that gets lost in the female characters.
29 March 2017