Smuggler's Island (1951)

The title does tee this up to be something better, but in the end this has more of the air of a standard "Charlie Chan" feature to it as we take a trip to the Portuguese colony of Macau where we encounter "Kent" (Jeff Chandler). He's an American diver, a bit down at heel, who in turn happens to luck out with the visiting "Vivian" (Evelyn Keyes). Nope - not in the way you might think - well not immediately, anyway, but she offers to pay him $1,000 if he will help her retrieve a cargo from the murky depths. When we discover what that is, well then there is soon no shortage of other interested parties - not least estranged husband "Allan" (Philip Friend) and local crime boss "Bok-Ying" (Marvin Miller). They need to get the goods to the safety of Hong Kong - but what chance? Well, that's just one of the problems with this lacklustre crime drama. There's not the slightest amount of jeopardy as the plot follows a path as surely as if it had only recently been dredged across the Pearl river. Chandler and Keyes don't really gel at all and the less said about the not-so-menacing Miller the better. The story itself is all pretty derivative, but that needn't have mattered so much had the underwhelming Chandler managed to impose himself on the blandness of the film, but he can't and although the fog-bound ending is quite excitingly delivered, the rest of this is all just a bit forgettably so-so. Where was Robert Newton?