Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

JohnHowardReid I once saw a cinema program that combined "Of Mice and Men" with "Sundown". No greater contrast could possibly be imagined, yet both movies stand at the forefront of their particular genres. "Of Mice and Men" is Literature, "Sundown" a serial thriller from The Saturday Evening Post. Fresh from her triumph as Belle Starr (1941), lovely Gene Tierney is at her exotic best in Henry Hathaway's action-a-plenty Sundown (available on a 10/10 VCI DVD). Bruce Cabot, George Sanders, Harry Carey are the heroes battling a native uprising instigated by Nazis in Africa. Hathaway and his brilliant photographer, Charles Lang, handle this tosh with such pace and bravura as to engage the rapt attention of even the most jaundiced viewer. A superb Miklos Rozsa score adds to the excitement of Lang's noirishly atmospheric photography of the movie's really striking sets and locations. Who will ever forget the terrifying sight and sound of tracer bullets flashing through the night? Not me, that's for sure!

drystyx SUNDOWN is what you might call a minor epic. It is about the old British grandeur. Instead of Heston, we get Bruce Cabot, who still looks King Kong tall, before he was dwarfed by the duke in later films.Gene Tierney's beaut was probably the big marketing device here, and Hathaway directs to make full use of it.The story is one that some people today mistakenly think was normally acceptable as how people viewed life. Knowing people from the era, as they spoke in the sixties and seventies, it is obvious that they thought it was just as silly in 1941 as it is thought of today, the grand British presence in Africa, the "sahib", the almighty "bwana".Set during World War II, we get a look at the different countries and how their people naturally allied themselves. The Italian is a proud man, willing to live with the British, for instance.What you will probably note most about this film is that it doesn't adhere to modern acceptable story telling standards. It is expository with sudden jumps from one idea to another, particularly at the end, which seems to come out of nowhere. That doesn't mean it is bad story telling. It just isn't what we're taught today.Full of fairly common clichés, it doesn't dwell too much on any one of them, and proceeds to tell a story with believable characters.

MARIO GAUCI This old-fashioned desert adventure set during WWII features a very good cast (Gene Tierney, Bruce Cabot, George Sanders, Joseph Calleia, Harry Carey, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Reginald Gardiner, Marc Lawrence, Gilbert Emery) and solid production values but is not particularly distinguished or even memorable. Even so, the film did manage to earn 3 Academy Award nominations for Alexander Golitzen's art direction, Charles Lang's cinematography and Miklos Rosza's music.While Tierney is the film's nominal star, she actually doesn't have that much of a role playing a native girl who goes to work as an agent for the British against the Germans. Hardwicke, then, only appears at the very end, as a pastor delivering a stirring sermon in a dilapidated church which prefigures Henry Wilcoxon's similar role in William Wyler's MRS. MINIVER (1942). Harry Carey, too, is not given much to do but Marc Lawrence makes for a menacing treacherous native and Cabot and Sanders are their usual reliable selves in competing for the attentions of Ms. Tierney. Surprisingly, however - or perhaps not, having previously wooed Mae West in MY LITTLE CHICKADEE (1940) - it's our very own Joseph Calleia (playing an Italian P.O.W. who acts as cook to his captors and is given to hollering operatic arias every once in a while - Calleia had, in fact, been a professional opera singer before moving to Hollywood) who is Tierney's confidante. Being Maltese, I have to say that it was a joy for me to watch him in the company of such an alluring star, not to mention playing against one of my favorite character actors George Sanders. Intriguingly, the IMDb states that Dorothy Dandridge (as a teenage native about to be forced to marry a wealthy older man), Rory Calhoun, Woody Strode and even future Cult Italian director Riccardo Freda make an appearance in this one but, apart from Dandridge, I didn't catch them! Despite Henry Hathaway's reputation as one of Hollywood's top action directors - having made, among others, the seminal THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER (1935) - here he is let down by a second-rate script (courtesy of Barre' Lyndon and Charles G. Booth) which is ultimately just a rehash of GUNGA DIN (1939) and updated to the WWII era. A competent escapist adventure and time-waster, then, but regrettably enough given the talent at hand, nothing more...

mdmphd This early B entry into the patriotic category slapped a gorgeous young Gene Tierney on the ads and posters, but you have to wait a good time before you glimpse her, riding in a Hollywoodized camel train. Previously, we've set up George Sanders and Bruce Cabot in the desert as guys who barely get along, but must rally in the face of attack. I've seen Sanders as so many enjoyable cads that it was fun to witness a rare good guy turn. However, Bruce Cabot's allure is pretty much a mystery to me - he's base and unsubtle in comparison, but I've always felt he'd just emerged, smiling, from under a car, covered in grease and a sixth grade education. Some people like 'em that way, as did Gene's gypsy queen character. This is an action adventure filler, tho, and just as we've been warned of invading locals with guns, ready to sabotage and attack the Brits in their land, there is a final gun battle in which we must lose a main character for the good of all. This feature requires nothing more than your barest attention on a Saturday afternoon, a programmer that made whatever else it was paired with better. It was almost more interesting identifying the great supporting cast and a surprise appearance by Dorothy Dandridge in one of her first roles. A two or two and a half stars out of five.-MDM