We’re putting one over on this audience!
Travelers on a trans-Pacific flight have an unfortunate crash that kills all but one member of the flight crew, but leaves the passengers unharmed, if a bit flustered. Washing up on a beach, they soon happen on the inhabitants – an American, Jim Taylor, and a Chinese, Ping, living quietly together. It’s a veritable Sinners in Paradise (1938), because everyone has a secret, it seems – or at least a sin.
Soon enough, the passengers discover there’s a boat available, and lean on Taylor to use it to rescue them. Taylor caves to the pressure and, because of the limitations of the boat, constructs a plan for conveying the passengers some thousand miles to inhabited land. Before he can implement his plan, though, two of the passengers, competing salesmen for ammunition suppliers intent on getting to China in order to supply either of the two sides with ammo, hijack the ship and fire on the other survivors, killing the one innocent in the group, an old lady who was going to China to visit her son.
There’s more to it than that, and it zips right along, but because no time is spent letting us bond with any character in particular, it’s all fairly pain-free and dull. Unless you’re a completist for one of these actors, I wouldn’t bother with this one.
