Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

***SPOILERS*** The usual WWII Hollywood propaganda flick involving Canadian Mountie Cpl. Steve Wagner played by Australian/American Errol Flynn-All three countries fighting for the allied side-doing his bit for the cause by betraying his country and joining the Nazis so he can find out what their up to and then turning the tables on them. It's when Nazi airman Col. Hugo Von Keller,Helmut Dantine, is found almost frozen to death in the Canadian wild that Wagner-a Canadian of German decent-wins him over by playing traitor to his country Canada and offering to help Hugo in sabotaging the allied war effort.With his partner in the Mounties Jim Austin, John Ridgely, in on the shame he trails Hugo and his fellow Nazis, who just escaped from a Stalg 17 like POW camp camp,,to where their going in the northern Canadian wood along with Wagner's girlfriend Laura McMcBain played by Julie Bishop- You can't make a movie with Errol Flynn not having a love interest in it-who somehow got hooked up with the group tagging along. It's not that long when the hugely intelligent Hugo-He must have an IQ of at least 100-realizes that Wagner is in fact conning him and trying to find out what he's really up to and has Austin shot and killed when he tried to join, as a fellow Nazi, his group. But Hugo-Using his head or noodle-can't have Wagner/Flynn knocked off since he's not only the star of the movie but the only one who knows his way around and how to survive in the bitter cold and snowy Canadian woods.***SPOILERS*** You know something is screwy here when it's revealed by a boastfully Hugo what he's planning to do in assembling from scratch a Nazi bombing plane hidden in a cave with 4 bombs on it to cut the supply line between Cannada and the US by single handily knocking out the locks-Not lox-of the critical Saint Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean! This insane plan was doomed to failure right from the start but don't tell that to Hugo that delusional and overconfident Nazi creep! It's Hugo who ends up together with his dinky bomber and his fellow Nazis on board crashing into and sinking to the bottom of Hudon's Bay! With our hero a wounded but quickly recovered Cpl. Steve Wagner who snuck on the plane, and was shot by Hugo, who blasted a wild eyed Hugo and while still badly wounded parachuted to safety, Where did he learn to do that in the Canadian Mounties?, and straight into the arms of his girlfriend Laura; Whom he married when the film ended!

Way up north in the Canadian outback, a German submarine rises out of the icy waters. Of those who disembark, only one survives, the rest knocked off in an avalanche. For this Nazi (Helmut Dantine), his goal is to get to a secret Nazi disapatchery of military supplies which include weapons and a war plane. Of the Northwest Mounted Police, it is the German descended Errol Flynn who becomes the pawn in his plan to get more of his men (all being transported to a prisoner of war detention center) and get to the secret base. Flynn pretends to be a traitor, and as for the rest, well, more of the same from other war propaganda films.Except, this more of the same is an exciting snowbound trek across the Yukon territory, as far up north as humanly possible to travel. There are a few plot clichés which include Flynn's fiancée Julie Bishop conveniently used by the Nazis to keep Flynn in line, and poor Gene Lockhart, typecast once again as a fool, a supposed American businessman who is a traitor both sinister and cowardly, getting no sympathy.As for Dantine, there are a few moments where his character shows tinges of humanity, but when you've got Hitler in your brain, those moments are brief. Flynn leaves his tongue out of his cheek for most of this movie in playing this character, whose alliances are briefly in question. A corny final moment seems thrown in as an unnecessary Hollywood "In Like Flynn" joke. The excitement of the rest of the film, though, makes that eye-rolling moment forgivable.

Flynn is a corporal in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They used to dress every day in colorful red jackets. Now they're known as the RCMP and dress like the Highway Patrol. It is a great loss.Flynn is more or less kidnapped by German pilot Helmut Dantine and his three Nazi companions and forced to lead them across the wilderness of northern Manitoba, where a bomber is stashed. The plan is to bomb the locks of the St. Lawrence River or to mar the splendor of Niagara Falls and disappoint all the honeymooners or something. It's not made very clear.These Nazis are really bad boys, especially the stern and handsome Helmut Dantine. They kidnap a couple of women to take along as hostages. They kill anyone who gets in their way, as well as anyone they meet who is of no use to the Nazi cause. And if one of their own people is disabled, he can kiss his life good-bye. That's the kind of rats they are.Flynn is handsome as usual, this being 1943. He'd not gotten along at all well with his previous director, Michael Curtiz, and by this time he was being directed by the Irish-American Raoul Walsh, whose work had as much zip but who was more tolerant of Flynn's boozing. The two had an agreement that Flynn wouldn't start drinking until 5 in the afternoon.There's a supposedly comic introduction and close, involving Julie Bishop as the daughter of a cheapskate Scottish shop keeper at a trading post. At the very end, when Flynn and Bishop are finally married, he embraces her at the party. She asks, "How many women have you loved before me?". Flynn replies, "None, darling," then turns his face towards the camera, rolls his eyes, and mutters, "What am I saying?" Some joke. He'd recently been in court on charges of statutory rape brought against him by two teen-aged cutie pies who testified that he'd seduced them aboard his yacht and had made love while wearing his socks. Some wag suggested that the movie Flynn had just completed, "Gentleman Jim," should have its name changed to just "Jim." A couple of outdoor shots were done at Sun Valley, Idaho, including an exciting ski chase. Most of the film was shot at the Warners' Studios. Yet, the settings are reasonably convincing, except that nobody's breath steams and all the clothing is so immaculate and clean, even Helmut Dantine's white turtle neck, which he never seems to change. A kind of minor narrative thread alludes to the Canadians' treatment of Indians, which here generates a resentment soon dissipated when they see what the Nazis are like. Actually, Canadian Indians, probably Algonkin-speaking Woods Cree in this case, were treated fairly well, at least compared to American Indians.Even with all the suspense, this isn't a very fast-paced movie, and either I was asleep when Flynn and his superiors worked out the plan to discover what the Nazis were up to, or else the editor should be tied to an evergreen tree trunk and left to be eaten alive by ravenous timber wolves, or maybe -- this could get to be fun -- maybe he could be impaled repeatedly by an enraged moose.

Raoul Walsh, the director of "Northern Pursuit", was a man with impressive credentials during his days in Hollywood. Unfortunately, this film, which kept reminding this viewer of Michael Powell's "49th Parallel", has its moments and will reward the viewer that sticks with it, in some ways.The plot was typical of the films turned by the big studios during the days of WWII. Although the propaganda in "Northern Pursuit" doesn't strike the viewer as too obvious, it's there all along. The idea of a Royal Mountie, in this case, the dashing Errol Flynn, going after the bad guys have all the elements for a good adventure.The screen play is ultimately the downfall of the film, although there are hints of greatness, especially on the last part of the film which involves a daring attempt from the head Nazi infiltrator to fly an aircraft with a bomb on board. The locations appear to be real, but we can see the scenes shot in the studio.Errol Flynn does his job well. Helmut Dantine, playing Keller, the Nazi bad guy, is even better. Gene Lockhart has a pivotal role in the film. Julie Bishop is Errol Flynn's love interest, although there's no obvious chemistry between them.Raoul Walsh's fans will probably enjoy this film a lot more than the casual viewer.