Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

San Francisco insurance adjuster Glenn Ford (as Al Colby) is in hot water. He tells US authorities in Mexico what put him there… Quickly, we flashback as Mr. Ford arrives in Havana, Cuba. Strapped for cash, Ford meets alluring Patricia Medina (as Anna Luz) at a bar and takes a job offered by her old and ailing companion Francis L. Sullivan (as Thomas Berrien). Plagued by a bad heart and confined to a wheelchair, Mr. Sullivan hires Ford to help them smuggle a small package into Mexico. En route, the newly formed trio meet sneaky blond Sean McClory (as Jefferson), who is interested in small packages. Ford also encounters tipsy tramp Diana Lynn (as Julie Barnes), who propositions him with the line, "I like well built men." Finally, the package Ford is carrying opens, and mysteries are revealed. Unfortunately the plot thins and several in the cast act types rather than parts. However, the location photography by Jack Draper makes it nice looking.***** Plunder of the Sun (8/26/53) John Farrow ~ Glenn Ford, Patricia Medina, Diana Lynn, Sean McClory

Thin, ultimately silly film is given unearned heft by virtue of Jack Draper's cinematography which turns ancient Mexican ruins into the nightmare city of classic noir, the wet streets and shadowy alleys that are the essence of the genre. Glenn Ford is sour and surly as an American insurance man who travels the tropics with a full wardrobe of tweed suits (maybe that's why he's so grim). Down on his luck in a vividly evoked pre-Castro Cuba, he signs on to smuggle a certain antiquity BACK into the Mexico from whence it came for reaasons that never make much sense. Soon there are three or four factions vying for whatever he has taped under his left nipple: a sleazy archaeologist (Sean McClory), an American hot thang with plasticene-brassiere breasts that jut like nose cones (Dianna Lynne), a sultry hispanic gal (Patricia Medina), and finally some kind of Mexican expert and his thug son. There's too much fist fighting over a gun--Glenn and Sean duke it out about four times over Sean's Colt Detective Special--and the whole thing never makes much sense. But damn, it looks GREAT! Don't know who this Draper guy is--he seems mostly to have worked in Mexico--but his deep focus photography really brings the location to menacing, palpable life. The best passage follows as Ford evokes the ruins and what they mean to dim, pointy-titted Lynne, and it's pre-PC so he's able to make vivid the human sacrifice that blasphemed the place and thus give it a vibration of tragedy and death otherwise unearned in the movie. The other delight is McClory's debauched archaeologist, under a blonde crewcut and some heavy tortoise-shell specs. He's very vivid and far more charismatic than the dreary, mumbly Ford The movie really looses it in its climax, and ends in a silly shootout and fistfight in a backlot Hollywood set that wastes all the good will it had built up with the location work; suddenly, it looks like early TV and in a sense it has become early TV.

I'm sure the primary reason that Glenn Ford and the rest of the cast did Plunder of the Sun is that they got a chance to film the whole story on location in Havana and later on in the Mexican city of Oaxaca. Pity they didn't shoot the thing in color.I for one was disappointed that Francis L. Sullivan was killed right at the beginning of the film after he hires Glenn Ford to smuggle a small package into Mexico on board a ship that set sail from Havana. Sullivan is always good and I certainly looked forward to a film where he was once again the villainous mastermind.What Ford was carrying was some ancient Aztec writings about a buried treasure located in Oaxaca. And then a whole bunch of people come into his life ready and willing to be his partner. Including the beautiful Patricia Medina and the trampy Diana Lynn. Lynn was surprisingly good as an alcoholic, poaching on the kind of parts Gloria Grahame took out a patent on. I wouldn't be surprised if Grahame wasn't who Batjac productions had in mind for the part originally.My guess is that the film had a lot of relevant parts left on the cutting room floor. Scenes changed without any transition and characters seemed to be left without motivation. And Sean McClory really looked dumb in a blond wig. Detracted from his performance as a rapacious and disgraced archaeologist, an Indiana Jones gone to seed.John Wayne produced this and had the good sense not to star.

David Dodge's novel is brought to the screen with Ford excellent as protagonist Al Colby. The script however, plays fast and loose with the novel, changing the locale from Peru to Mexico and now the search is on for Aztec artifacts instead of Incan. All things considered, this is a tightly directed and well acted tale. It has not been available for viewing as it seems to be tied up in litigation along with "Island in the Sky"(1953) and "The High and the Mighty"(1954)as the Wayne Family battles Warner Brothers and we are the losers.