Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Beulah Bram A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

kapelusznik18 ***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!

MartinHafer I was a bit surprised by this film. Despite being a quality production from Warner Brothers with a top director and a top star, the film was seemingly written by chipmunks--and dumb ones at that. Perhaps the reason they filmed such a bad plot is because it was WWII and they wanted a good propaganda piece for the audiences--but still, it should have been a lot better. Instead of bolstering the war effort, this film probably just elicited a few laughs.Why did I dislike the script so much? Well, the biggest problem is how ludicrous the plot was. Sometimes you need to suspend disbelief to enjoy a film--here you need to turn off you brain completely! You are expected to believe that the Germans would send soldiers all the way to the most inhospitable wasteland of Canada. Then, you need to accept that they plan to bomb the St. Lawrence Seaway---and had planted planes in the wild years before the war in order to do this!! And, the Germans who concocted such a complicated plot had to be dumb enough to have this ridiculous plot foiled by a double-agent (Flynn). Now this is not the only obvious problem with the script. It also is, from time to time, a bit dull and could have either used a trimming or some more excitement along the journey. Much of it simply shows the group slogging through the snow in the sound stage--and a little of this goes a long way.It's really a shame about the script, as the acting was quite good. Even though Errol Flynn had little to do in most of the movie, as usual his performance appears effortless as he was a very good actor. Gene Lockhart plays a heartless and spineless guy very well. And, relatively unknown Helmut Dantine is fine as a cold and snarling Nazi. These actors simply deserved better and the main reason I still give a reasonably high score was their acting--and it must have been hard giving good performances when they knew the script was a turkey.

tmpj Some might dismiss this film as typical Hollywood propaganda...and they may be right, to a certain extent. But I dig old movies because they do not often cloud the issues, and the good guys and bad guys are not hard to pinpoint, unless you are watching a real mystery of some sort. There is some mystery here, though not the type Ellery Queen would flaunt. Nazis came through to the American continent during WWII in numbers that would make us all more uncomfortable than we would admit. Canada had its share, for sure, and the RCMP had its work cut out for it. People often forget that prior to the hostilities of that war, there existed something called the "German/American" Bund, and that the majority of immigrants to this nation are of Germanic descent. To the Germans, this made the pickings good if they could get a smooth talking German to make the point and gain converts. That is the premise here, with Flynn and his Mountie buddy making a bust of these interlopers. But Flynn blows it, does not make an arrest, and things start to look as if he is a traitor to the Crown. Turns out, it is an orchestration to merely find out what these Nazi chumps are up to...but the price is an horrific one. Lives are lost along the way, some needlessly and even a few Nazis are thrown to the wolves by their own kith and kin. Flynn's WWII efforts are particularly appealing because of his suavete, his accent, and his general bearing. These may seem un-American to some, but he was, actually, quite Patriotic for the times. WWII movies are very entertaining because WWII can be viewed as more if a "just war", if anything can be imagined...and a lot of heart and passion went into many of the films, which were manned by the best directors and crews, and populated by some of the greatest of actors. This one does not approach the thresh-hold of 'great' by any means, but it is very entertaining. A worthy watch if you care to view it.

blanche-2 This is a real bow-wow.Errol Flynn stars in "Northern Pursuit," a 1943 propaganda film directed by Raoul Walsh. It also stars Helmut Dantine, Gene Lockhart, and Julie Bishop.Walsh told a story of how Jack Warner used to call him up to his office and tell him he had to direct a script for him. Warner would have no details, not even the cast. "Some bum," he would say, when Walsh asked him who was in it. This scenario might have been the case for "Northern Pursuit." Flynn and Walsh were very close friends, but they both might have been blind-sided into this one by dear old Jack.The premise story concerns Nazis in Canada who are trying to get way into the Canadian wilderness, where parts of a bomber have been hidden. Once assembled, it's going to take out the St. Lawrence Seaway. More than a little preposterous. Flynn is a mountie whose character is of German descent, so he goes undercover and, knowing the area, helps the Nazis on their journey.Even if you ignore this plot, and you have to in order to get through the movie, it's pretty slow going. There are some exciting scenes, but this isn't your usual Flynn adventure film. Helmut Dantine and Gene Lockhart give excellent performances, though, and handsome, charismatic Flynn does as well as he can given the circumstances.A youngster on this board trashed this movie, the 1940s audiences, and propaganda films in general, making mention of the "special effects." Given that this was filmed on a Warner sound stage without benefit of CGI and a computer, the film looks pretty good, with some very effective effects. I don't think the 1940s audiences were stupid -rather, I think the audiences today have been dumbed down. Propaganda movies weren't so that audiences would hate the enemy. I have a feeling they already did. They were done to keep up the morale during a very difficult time in this country. "Northern Pursuit" isn't particularly representative of the genre. When you consider the number of films the studios put out, they had a very high number of excellent ones. Okay, so this isn't one of them.