High Road to China (1983) on Netflix
PG19831h 45mAdventureDramaRomance
Society heiress Eve Tozer has twelve days to find her missing father before he is declared dead and her inheritance goes to his business partner. She hires wartime ace Patrick O'Malley.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb6.1/106,533 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes65%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1920s Istanbul, Eve Tozer is a flapper and society heiress whose father, the industrialist Bradley Tozer, has gone missing in Asia. His scheming business partner Bentik stands to claim the family fortune if Bradley is officially declared dead, and Eve has only twelve days to find him and stop that from happening. She hires Patrick O'Malley, a hard-drinking World War I flying ace who is also eager to leave town in a hurry. Eve is a pilot as well and refuses to stay behind, so the two set out in separate biplanes, arguing about the arrangements from the start. Their search carries them through six countries toward China.
Cast
- Shayur Mehtaas Ahmed
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about High Road to China (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The project was originally set to star Roger Moore and Jacqueline Bisset under director John Huston; after they dropped out, Bo Derek was cast opposite Moore, but she also left because she would only be directed by her husband.
- Tom Selleck reportedly was given the lead role as a consolation prize after he had to turn down Raiders of the Lost Ark itself because of scheduling conflicts with his TV series Magnum, P.I.
- High Road to China is regarded as one of the "imitators" that populated movie theaters in the years after Raiders of the Lost Ark, but, as with Romancing the Stone, its source material actually predated the Lucasfilm production by four years.
- Replica Bristol F2B biplanes built for the production were judged too dangerous to fly at high altitude, so the filmmakers switched to two Stampe SV-4 biplanes instead.
- Filming took place in Yugoslavia with a crew of 231: 145 Yugoslavs, 60 British, 15 Italians, 10 Americans and one Frenchman. The production also added 50 Yugoslav actors to the speaking cast and hired 4,000 extras.
- Tom Selleck later recalled that actors had left a series to start a feature career before, but there was no one at that point who was trying to do both at the same time, so his position was unique.
