If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

As Good As It Gets

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Likeable American war movie about a group of valiant sailors who escape through the Gobi desert .The surprising tale of Uncle Sam's "sailors on camels" , a little US naval detachment who battled throughout the Mongolian desert. Along the way the sailors attempt to engage local the Mongol tribesman to attack Japanese ; but things go wrong when those respond by bombing the station .Set in 1944 inner Mongolia , where a team of US Navy specialists run a weather station , they are forced to a marathon trek across the sunny desert where are harassed and attacked by Japanese warplanes , taken prisoners , but helped by local Mongol nomads whom deliver 60 horse saddles and become them into an expert Mongolian cavalry . This a sympathetic movie in which interest and entertainment never fall . The screenplay contains implausible adventures , goodhumoured scenes , tongue-in-cheek excitement , agreeable situations with the laughs in the right places .Widmark plays an US Navy officer assigned to take charge a bunch of meteorologistics at a remote weather station , when a Japanese attack leaving to him and his company alone in the wilderness to fend for themselves , Richard gives the film enough security and authority . And he is backed by a magnificent cast that includes Don Taylor , Russell Collins , Murvyn Vye , Casey Adams , Willis Bouchey , Darryl Hickman , Rodolfo Acosta , Richard Loo and Earl Holliman , Martin Milner film debut . And Paiute Indians living in reservation where was shot the movie played Mongol extras .Musical score from Alfred Newman and Sol Kaplan is highly commendable. Colorful cinematography in Technicolor by Charles Clarke , being Wise's first color movie . Being filmed on location in Nixon and Fallon and other Indians reservation . Produced and released by 2oth century Fox and well directed by Robert Wise who never lets the action sag .Wise was a good director who made films in all kinds of genres , nowadays , some of them considered classic movies , such as : Musical : West side story , The sound of music ; SciFi: The day the Earth stood , Andromeda strain , Star Trek the motion picture ; Terror : The haunting , The body snatchers, , Audrey Rose , Curse of cat people ; Wartime : Run silent Run deep , The Desert Rats ; Historical : Helen of Troy ; Western : Tribute to a bad man ; Drama : I want to live , The Set-up , among others

I must say I enjoyed this a lot when I first saw it, but that was many years ago and I was a child. Today, after movies have been more or less modernized, it seems really crude. Careless may be a better word.Half a dozen Navy men are sent to a remote weather station in Inner Mongolia. They are joined at the oasis by a group of Mongol nomads, for whom they request saddles from the U.S. Army. A Japanese air attack drives off the Mongols, destroys the radio, and kills the officer in command, leaving Chief Boatswain's Mate Widmark to lead the men in an attempt to reach the sea, hundreds of miles away.The location shooting in Nevada depicts the arid grasslands of southeastern Inner Mongolia with some accuracy. The performances may be good too but it's impossible to tell because the script is so clumsy, as if aimed at kids who were my age when I first saw it.No kidding. It's written as if written by a computer with a low IQ. The Mongols are properly dressed and their housing is accurate but they are nothing more than generic "natives" with strange customs, full of suspicion, and puzzled by a camera. "Desert make Navy Chief Mad," says Sitting Bull -- I mean Murvyn Vye, the white man who plays the Mongol chief.There is one scene, though, that I find more amusing than I did on first viewing, and that's the scene in which Widmark has filled a large weather balloon with helium and is about to release it. It always reminds me of when I was a deck hand on a Coast Guard cutter at a weather station in the Pacific. The meteorologists used helium balloons with tails of radar-reflecting tinsel. One night, one of the snipes got into the weather shack, filled one of the balloons and brought it below where the crew lay stacked in their bunks, passing the balloon around and taking big hits off it. What you wind up with is cerebral anoxia because the more helium you breathe, the less oxygen you get. I can't help laughing when I remember those dozen sailors lolling around and saying in these squeaky Mickey-Mouse helium voices: "Man, I never been so stoned." Mais, je divage. Where was I? Yes, the movie. ALL of the dialog sound utterly trite, down to the wisecracks. There is the inevitable attractive native girl. "Well, it looks like you made a big hit with her; I don't know how you do it." "It's my training as a meteorologist, son. I can take one look at her and tell weather." (That's the best crack in the movie.) Richard Widmark's narration is up to the standard. "The heat swam up to you like too much batter in a waffle iron." That raises the question of whether the writer, Freeman, had learned how to write from reading lots of Raymond Chandler.The second half of the film devolves into a "journey" movie with bedraggled men hauling themselves across blinding-white sand dunes praying the next oasis may be just over the next hill. They acquire camels from the Mongols. Their riding camels is treated as an epic comic event, accompanied by an antic version of "Anchors Away." And when the men change out of their dusty khakis and don dark Mongol gear with those clown hats, why it's just a zany laff riot.The men are captured by the Japanese, imprisoned, stage an escape, steal a Chinese junk, and sail to Okinawa. I know it was directed by Robert Wise but he doesn't seem to have put much into it, and the writers were asleep at the helm. It could have been a comedy thriller if it had been handled right, with Burt Lancaster swinging from the shrouds.

I saw Destination Gobi in 1953. I looked for a copy of the movie for years until I was able to get it on DVD. I have watched this movie several times since, and enjoy each viewing.I differ from some of the more critical reviews. Too often the reviews come off as the "want-to- be movie critics", who seem to nitpick this and that. They fail to recognize that some movies are meant for just entertainment. Destination Gobi falls into this category. It wasn't meant to become Movie of the Year, nor to compete with Gone With the Wind.I have most of the war movies made in my DVD library. World War II created many Hollywood opportunities in creating movies, along with governmental approval to boost patriotism. And, Hollywood produced many, some great, others poor. Movie goers liked some, disliked others. It's just a matter of one's own personal view of what they're looking for in a film. If it's for their desire to have an opportunity to become a pseudo-movie critic, then so be it. I watch movies for entertainment

There were a lot of WW2 pictures made in the late 40s and early 50s, made as uncomplicated gung-ho nostalgia, doubling as propaganda for the ongoing war in Korea. By and large they were cheap and cheerful affairs; poorly scripted and poorly acted. Destination Gobi is just such a picture, its main exception being that it is somewhat spruced up by the direction of the great Robert Wise.Being relatively low-budget Destination Gobi is rather short on action, instead relying upon suspense sequences and musings on military life for its entertainment value. Sadly the screenplay isn't quite up to the task. There is a sprinkling of quasi-philosophical dialogue, most of which is feeble and unconvincing (the only line I liked was the one about Inner Mongolia being "hotter, dryer and inner"). The characters are the usual B-movie one-dimensionals, and many scenes are so lacking in credibility the tension can't work because there is no real sense of danger.This is where Robert Wise comes in. It's often interesting, albeit dissatisfying, to see a really top-notch director slumming it in a B-unit – to see what they can make out of the weakest of elements. This is especially true of Wise, who had no ego and always aimed to make the best out of whatever the studios threw at him. This is his first colour picture and, as far as I know his earliest to really make use of wide-open spaces. Most of Wise's pictures up until now had been gritty thrillers, and even his 1948 horse opera Blood on the Moon is – literally – a dark Western. It's been remarked by others that the landscape in Destination Gobi is filmed to show off its beauty, but also watch Wise's timing. It would be normal convention to cut to a landscape shot after the opening scene at SACO HQ, but in fact Wise takes care not to properly show us the desert and emphasises the smallness and darkness of the tent. Only after the Mongols have been introduced do we get these breathtaking outdoor shots. The contrast is striking and it makes us associate the Mongols with the beauty of the location, even if only subconsciously.I am sure Wise knew he had been given a bum script, and he takes advantage of the quiet moments. Wise's direction was generally at its best when there was no dialogue anyway (check out Lawrence Tierney in Born to Kill) and he particularly seemed to like drawing out these moments and giving the actors space to emote. Consequently there is tenderness uncharacteristic of such a picture when the soldiers mourn a fallen comrade, opening the scene with a respectful long shot of the gravesite. Again the natural beauty of the landscape is used, this time as a bittersweet counterpoint.The cast is headed by Richard Widmark, who like Wise was good at what he did yet spent much of his career in B-flicks. And, as with Wise, we can look at this positively and say that he at least leant some quality to pictures that have very little else going for them. He can't quite make the appalling dialogue sound plausible, but at least he emotes well and has strong presence. The Mongol characters may not be granted any dignity by the screenplay, but at least the reliable Murvyn Vye turns in a dignified performance as Chief Kengtu, adding a layer of personality to the character that is not there in the script.These little oases of quality do not prevent Destination Gobi from mostly being a desert of mediocrity. Studying Robert Wise's work, this is like a little exercise in thoughtful direction, but nothing more because there isn't enough depth to the story or characters to make it pay off. And who would expect more from a ninety-minute no-brainer? However, at least the efforts of Wise (as well as renowned art directors Lyle Wheeler and Lewis Creber, and cinematographer Charles Clarke – well-deserved honourable mentions) have made it nice to look at. It's occasionally even entertaining as well.