ridiculous rating

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

DESTINATION GOBI is another desert-based WW2 movie, directed by Robert Wise - no stranger to the genre having made THE DESERT RATS - and featuring the ubiquitous Richard Widmark heading an otherwise undistinguished cast. This one's a little different, telling the true story of navy men running a weather research station in Mongolia, who find themselves under attack by the Japanese and who team up with Mongol forces to fight them.I enjoy war films like this which are a little different from the norm, exploring theatres of war usually avoided in the popular books and films on the subject. DESTINATION GOBI isn't a great movie but it does keep you watching just to find out what happens. Widmark is a reliable lynch pin on which to hang the movie although the supporting cast disappoint, particularly the US actors pretending to be Mongolian which never works. There isn't a wealth of action here, but that which does occur is authentic (the plane attack is very well portrayed) and the suspense keeps you going until the end.

The UKs Channel 4 TV is showing a series of WW2 action films. They vary in quality, but this is the worst so far. The acting is wooden, the film is clichéd, the screenplay is lazy and the Mongolian culture is so insulted by Hollywood's 1950s image of indigenous peoples. Look at the wonderful family film 'The Cave of the Yellow Dog' to see the Mongols as they wish to be viewed. Find some wonderful films starring Richard Widmark (How the West was Won, Judgement at Nuremberg or The Alamo for example) rather than this rubbish. Whilst Everett Freeman was a prolific Hollywood writer, this was Edmond G. Love's only film. I am not surprised to see a long list of uncredited actors. Robert Wise was such an accomplished director, he must have been very inexperienced to do this work. He went on to direct classics like West Side Story, the Sound of Music and even Star Trek. This should be allowed to slip away uncredited to protect his good name.I cannot give more than 1 out of 10.

Hollywood was awash with triumphalist movies about the US military's comrades-in-arms in the first 10 years after the war in a self-congratulating furore to re-write history according to US attitudes and prejudices. You know the routine: sassy one-liners, everyone's nickname is "Mac" or "Buddy", everyone looks like a hero, serious leg-wounds that hospitalize us mortals are laughed off as inconvenient flesh-wounds that only need a quick bandage. Not for the Japs or Jerries, of course. The nasty-horrible baddies pepper the battlefield with bullets and grenades and one US hero dies; the US lieutenant fires his pistol once and a squadron of Nazi tanks explode and a thousand enemy soldiers writhe on the floor in screaming death-throes. Ha, ha, ha... ho, ho, ho... this is how we won the war, boys! It's so clichéd it could pass for pantomime.Destination Gobi is no exception. Watching this movie demonstrates how much our attitudes have changed.This is another one of those movies, but with the added bonus of being set in the Gobi Desert... if the Gobi Desert looks anything like California. The Mongols are suspicious savages - little more than replicas of the caricatured American Indians, but wearing supposed Mongolian clothes instead. The Mongols ride big, US Cavalry style horses and speak in monosyllabic words. They steal stuff from the US navy men. They want to kill one of them for using a camera, naturally. Makes sense, of course... since the Mongolians are ignorant savages who don't respect the brave US military servicemen and they all think a little camera's going to kill them.It never occurred to the film-makers to actually visit Mongolia and find out that the Mongolians ride small but sturdy ponies, live on a diet of goats and sheep milk and meat, learn how to wrestle for a centuries-old tradition of annual competitions, thunder across the desert and steppes on their ponies for countless miles in great tribal gatherings, have a typical Far Eastern respect for foreigners and strangers and their possessions and are a modest, reserved breed of people who live a tough existence in one of the most windswept places on earth. If the film-makers had, the Mongolians in this movie wouldn't have ended up looking like Klingons in fur caftans.Of course, the brave, all-knowing US servicemen in this movie drill the Mongolians in cavalry techniques. Only stands to reason, naturally. If it weren't for the US Cavalry in the Middle Ages, Genghis Khan wouldn't have sacked China, traversed the endless Russian Steppes, crushed a mighty East Indian kingdom guarded by walled fortress cities, crossed the unexplored Arabian Desert, sieged Baghdad while it was being invaded by Crusaders, and thundered into a startled Europe.Having been raised on a diet of such laughable caricatures and cultural superiority (as we all were in the 1960s, 70s and 80s), is it any wonder that the US faces current levels of fragile international relations?

This film has the feel of a documentary as sailor Richard Widmark frets at his role at a remote weather station in the Gobi Desert and yearns to get a ship under him again. Ultimately, he returns to the sea in an unexpected fashion.The relationship between the sailors and the nomadic Mongols is a crucial part of the film. The nomads are credibly portrayed as human beings who are neither all good or all bad. The film gets high marks for its portrayal of the Mongol culture. It would have been so easy for the film to show people who looked like the Native American Indians Hollywood films are so comfortable with. The Mongol yurts have a realistic look and the film truly succeeds here in portraying a different and likeable culture.There is little action in this film, but that's really not a problem. The unusual and probably unique story line more than makes up for it. The ending is a little hard to believe, but remember that anything is possible in films. Enjoy it.