Publisher: CinemaSerf November 12, 2022
Peter Finch is the eponymous doctor who, along with his estranged wife "Lee" (Mary Ure), is trying to make a go of his practice - and of their failing marriage - at a remote rubber plantation. He is a decent man who wants to improve the lot of the locals and that puts him at odds with the local employer "Patterson" (Michael Hordern) who rules the roost with little sympathy for his workforce. At the end of their tether, they organise a strike which gets out of control with tragic results. With "Patterson" gone seeking help from the authorities, it falls to "Windom" to try and avoid a full scale battle between the locals and the soon-to-arrive police. Finch manages to inject a little intensity to his performance, but the writing and the rest of the cast rather let it all down as does the lacklustre pace of the first half hour of the film. The narrative touches on the growing post-war insurgencies, across what was then the British Empire, amongst populations determined to make their own way - their desire to grow their own rice being emblematic of that stance here - and I suppose that would have resonated better in 1957, but looking at it now it is a rather light-weight melodramatic adventure film that I can't think I will ever watch again.