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High Road to China
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Additional DVD options | Edition | Discs | Price | New from | Used from |
DVD
January 5, 2010 "Please retry" | — | 1 |
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| $15.34 | $10.64 |
DVD
October 28, 2013 "Please retry" | — | 1 |
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| — | $61.05 |
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Purchase options and add-ons
Genre | Action & Adventure |
Format | Color, NTSC, Multiple Formats, Widescreen, Subtitled |
Contributor | Tom Selleck, Jack Weston, Brian G. Hutton, Bess Armstrong |
Language | English |
Runtime | 1 hour and 45 minutes |
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Product Description
Take the high road to adventure with Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong in this freewheeling action-comedy set in the Roaring Twenties. Selleck stars as Patrick O'Malley, a boozing, washed-up aviator who meets his match when he's hired by a high-strung heiress to find her long lost father. They make their way eastward in O'Malley's WWI biplane, surviving narrow escapes, last second rescues, and combat with warlords along the way. But nothing tops the ongoing battle they have with each other - the one which leads inevitably to romance.
Product details
- Aspect Ratio : 1.78:1
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
- Product Dimensions : 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.72 ounces
- Item model number : 4137
- Director : Brian G. Hutton
- Media Format : Color, NTSC, Multiple Formats, Widescreen, Subtitled
- Run time : 1 hour and 45 minutes
- Release date : April 17, 2012
- Actors : Tom Selleck, Bess Armstrong, Jack Weston
- Subtitles: : English
- Studio : Henstooth Video
- ASIN : B00744WZ6W
- Country of Origin : USA
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #20,795 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #2,083 in Action & Adventure DVDs
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from the United States
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I saw this in the theater when I was a teenager, and loved it--Tom Selleck was cool, tough, and funny, Bess Armstrong was sassy and cute, and the flying sequences through Nepal were amazing with that beautiful soundtrack. Watching it now when I am three decades older, I love it even more. Not to read too much into what is ultimately a romantic comedy, there is a surprising amount of commentary on the impact of the Great War. Selleck's character is an American ace from World War One who has fallen into drunken poverty, and in a scene where he is telling war stories to a group of young British pilots, we see that part of the reason may be guilt over the men he has killed. But violence seems to follow him whether he wants it or not; he becomes entangled in other people's conflicts, both political and personal, and though he wants to do the right thing he is no longer sure what that means.
Bess Armstrong's role is written with a surprising amount of depth. She is a "rich spoiled brat" as Selleck's character charges, but the movie is not about her getting her comeuppance; she is plucky and spunky, but she is not infallible, and it is not about her showing up Selleck's character as a chauvinist. She seems like a worldy-wise flapper, but is genuinely outraged when she thinks he has taken advantage of her. She begins rather childish and shrill, but as she learns more about her father's mysterious fate she becomes more mature and determined, as her concern goes from her financial security to a fear for what may have happened to him. Most of all, the character's mood turns on a dime, and Armstrong plays it with such skill that it makes me wonder why we never saw her in more leading roles like this.
From a slow start, Selleck and Armstrong build up a real chemistry, and by the end of the movie the real suspense is not whether the good guys will defeat the bad guys, but whether these two will finally stop bickering long enough to give us that passionate kiss we know is coming. (You won't be disappointed!)
An UPDATE to this review on 4-22-12: Since Amazon placed me on backorder with the Blu-ray temporarily out of stock, I ordered it from a marketplace seller who had it in stock, and I received it in 3 days. I was a little scared by the reviews I had read about the quality of the blu-ray, but I was not that dissapointed, to be quite honest. Having projected this movie several times on film ( I was a part-time projectionist while in college), the image quality of the Blu-ray is identical to the motion picture print. The movie never had very saturated colors, but they were very natural looking. Also, some scenes were apparently shot with a diffusion filter, making them look sightly foggy. Remember this is a 30 year old negative, and probably not heavily digitally restored. However the transfer to video is extremely clean with no scratches or dust marks at all. I actually was more dissapointed with the soundtrack. It was a 2-track DTS but had no surround encoding. I could not get my receiver to enhance it with any of the surround settings, and I was not able to get any sound from the rear channels at all!.
I want to thank Hens Tooth Video for making this great film available to us, and for doing a terrific job with the source they were given by the film's rights' proprietors. Shame to Warner Brothers, the original releasing company, for not restoring this great movie themselves to the maximum, particularly the soundtrack. I still recommend it as the BEST disc around for HIGH ROAD TO CHINA!
Top reviews from other countries
Reviewed in Canada on June 29, 2020
‘HIGH ROAD TO CHINA’ is a 1983 adventure-romance film, set in the 1920s, starring Tom Selleck as a hard-drinking biplane pilot hired by society heiress Eve 'Evie' Tozer [Bess Armstrong] to find her missing father. The film is set just after the First World War has finished. Eve 'Evie' Tozer is a young spoiled socialist. Patrick O' Malley [Tom Selleck] is a ragged and struggling aviator. From the moment they meet they hate each other, but he is commissioned to aid her in finding her father who has disappeared in Far East Asia.
They must find her father within twelve days otherwise; her whole family fortune goes to her father’s business partner, a murderous man who will stop at nothing to prevent them. Their pursuit of the missing father crosses six countries and two continents, encountering barbaric tribal warfare, peasant revolts and narrow escapes from death at every turn. It truly is an adventure you will never forget. Scored by John Barry (James Bond Franchise) and ‘HIGH ROAD TO CHINA’ was one of the highest grossing theatrical releases of 1983.
FILM FACT: Awards and Nominations: 1984 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films: Nominated: Best Fantasy Film. Nominated: Best Actress for Bess Armstrong.
Cast: Tom Selleck, Bess Armstrong, Jack Weston, Wilford Brimley, Robert Morley, Brian Blessed, Cassandra Gava, Michael Sheard, Lynda La Plante, Timothy Carlton, Shayur Mehta, Terry Richards, Jeremy Child, Peter Llewellyn Williams, Dino Shafeek, Robert Lee, Peggy Sirr, Anthony Chinn, Chua Kahjoo, Ric Young, Simon Prebble, Daniel Clucas, John Higginson, Timothy Bateson, Wolf Kahler, Marc Boyle, Zdenka Hersak, Domagoj Vukusic, Sime Jagarinac, Hai Ching Lim, Kim Rook Teoh and Rick Lester (uncredited)
Director: Brian G. Hutton
Producers: Andre Morgan, Daniel Grodnik, Fred Weintraub, Frederick Muller and Raymond Chow
Screenplay: Jonathan Hales (screenplay) (uncredited), S. Lee Pogostin (screenplay), Sandra Weintraub (screenplay) and Jon Cleary (novel)
Composer: John Barry
Cinematography: Ronnie Taylor (Director of Photography) and Peter Allwork, B.S.C. (Director of Photography of Ariel Sequences)
Image Resolution: 1080p [Technicolor]
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audio: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio
Subtitles: English
Running Time: 105 minutes
Region: Region B/2
Number of discs: 1
Studio: MediumRare Entertainment / Fortune Star
Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: ‘HIGH ROAD TO CHINA’ [1983] is a great little adventure-movie starring Tom Selleck as Patrick O’Malley and Bess Armstrong as Eve 'Evie' Tozer and starts off in Constantinople, Turkey, in 1920. The rich society-lady Eve 'Evie' Tozer is living a carefree life until she’s approached by the company solicitor who needs to know her father’s whereabouts. Her father has been missing for a couple of years and is about to be declared legally dead by his business-partner Bentik and he is played hilariously by Robert Morley.
The business-partner Bentik will take over the company as sole owner, thus leaving Eve 'Evie' Tozer without means to support her excessive lifestyle. Her father, played by Wilford Brimley is a very successful industrialist, entrepreneur and inventor and was last seen in Afghanistan. Eve 'Evie' Tozer decides to go and find him, but of course, because s Eve 'Evie' Tozer does not want to lose the fortune, has only 12 days to do it, and needs some urgent transportation fast. This is where Patrick O' Malley [Tom Selleck] comes in, who is an ace World War One pilot, but also a drunkard and a womanizer. When we first meet Patrick O' Malley, he is dead-drunk and getting his lights punched out by the husband of one of the women he has been hitting on.
The next morning as Patrick O' Malley is sleeping it off, Eve 'Evie' Tozer impatiently waits for him to wake up, and so she can hire him and his two biplanes, Dorothy and Lillian, which they are allegedly named after the Gish-sisters apparently. , Eve 'Evie' Tozer comes off as a spoiled brat at the start of the film, but money isn’t the only reason she wants to find her father, who she has not seen him in years, so naturally she misses him too!
Patrick O' Malley does not want to take the job and certainly not with Eve 'Evie' Tozer coming along for the ride, but the right amount of money finally makes him change his mind and Eve 'Evie' Tozer tells him that she’s going to fly the second plane, Patrick O' Malley scoffs at her and not believing it, dares her to fly the plane, and in a very hilarious and very funny scene she shows him that she is indeed an accomplished pilot. They soon take off towards their chosen destination, her in one plane and Patrick O' Malley and his mechanic Struts [Jack Weston] in the other.
After a couple more stops in Nepal and India, they finally learn that Bradley Tozer, Eve 'Evie' Tozer’s dad, is supposed to be in China, hence the title of the movie. All through this we’ve been going back and forth between them and London, where Bentik has been plotting their deaths the whole time. This ends in a totally spectacular dogfight between Patrick O' Malley and the man sent to kill them. There are some beautiful aerial shots in ‘HIGH ROAD TO CHINA,’ not just in this scene, but throughout the entire action packed film. And remember boys and girls, this was in times before the conception CGI was ever thought of, so those are real planes and real stunts!
Blu-ray Image Quality – MediumRare presents us with a 1080p image presentation and a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. This is a vast improvement over the previous inferior DVD release. When the film starts we get a very muddy quality of the image, which is done on purpose and the function of the credit sequence, which of course is to give the impression of the period of the film that is set in the 1920s which was produced by the optical superimposition that inevitably slightly degrades the image quality. As time goes by the image quality presentation changes significantly after we view Brian G. Hutton's director’s credit. After that the image becomes noticeably much cleaner, but overall it never at any point displays the level of detail and with the close-ups, medium or long shots, the Blu-ray image quality stays basically the same throughout the film. So overall it was quite a pleasant experience and I suspect that there was only really one master negative the companies could get their hands on and this is the best we will ever get to view. Please Note: Playback Region B/2: This will not play on most Blu-ray players sold in North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Learn more about Blu-ray region specifications.
Blu-ray Audio Quality – MediumRare presents us with the film's original soundtrack that is in 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio, and I felt it was pretty average audio fidelity, with excellent reproduction of dialogue and sufficient dynamic range to bring out John Barry's beautiful and brilliant film composed music score with this Academy Award composer. The aerial dogfight sequence shows off the work of the sound editors, even if all the sound stays with the front speakers that really show off the aerial dogfight sequence to great effect. So despite only hearing the one soundtrack, I found it slightly lacking in any kind depth for a stereo soundtrack for a modern film.
Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:
Theatrical Trailer [1983] ‘HIGH ROAD TO CHINA’ [1983] [1080p] [1.78:1] [1:59] This is the Original Theatrical Trailer for the film, and it a really good presentation, and the image even shows superior contrast compared to the same footage in the film.
Finally, ‘HIGH ROAD TO CHINA’ [1983] is certainly very similar in style to other high action films released in that period, and it is a very entertaining action adventure film with a great deal of humour. ‘HIGH ROAD TO CHINA’ is a lot of old-fashioned fun and sort of revived Tom Selleck’s acting career. But it has the same Saturday-matinee spirit, with director Brian G. Hutton nicely mixing a lot of action with a storyline taken sort of from a book by Jon Cleary, that never seems as absurd as it is, allowing the 105 minutes to move by very quickly. Tom Selleck is perfect as a grizzled, boozing biplane pilot whom 1920s flapper Bess Armstrong is forced to hire to help her find her father. Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong make a very agreeable couple, even though their bantering, slowly developing romance is deliberately predictable throughout the film. So all in all ‘HIGH ROAD TO CHINA’ is totally light-hearted, fun, clever and highly watchable romantic adventure film that has its dramatic moments but never takes itself too seriously. Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom