Steve McQueen is the star and the story is about a U. S. gunboat patrolling its station in an inland Chinese river in the 1920's or early 1930's.. What is a gunboat doing there, you might ask? It is a long story but comes from the weakness of China around the turn of the 20th Century. The film does a passable job showing the arising force of nationalism in China and the Chinese resentment about foreign intervention and privilege.
