ROGUES' REGIMENT

ROGUES’ REGIMENT. Universal International, 1948. Dick Powell, Märta Torén, Vincent Price, Stephen McNally, Edgar Barrier, Henry Rowland, Carol Thurston, James Millican, Richard Loo, Philip Ahn. Director: Robert Florey.

   Search and Destroy, the most recent movie I happen to have reviewed on this blog, appeared some four years after the end of the Viet Nam war. Most of Rogues’ Regiment, on the other hand, takes place in Viet Nam (aka French Indo-China) at the beginning of the conflict, as it originally took place.

   The premise is that one of the would-be defendants at the Nuremburg Trials, one Martin Bruener, had made his escape from Germany and was never found. As his photograph had never been taken, except for one in which only the back of his head can be seen, no one even knows what he looks like.

ROGUES' REGIMENT

   The trail, though meager and cold, leads one man, Whit Corbett (Dick Powell), to Indo-China, where the French and the Foreign Legion are desperately fighting to keep control there. So desperate are they that they are accepting former WW2 soldiers from all over the world — including Germany — as new recruits. Hence the title of the film, Rogues’ Regiment.

   Powell goes so far as to sign up for a tour of duty with the Legion, and although we do not know this right away, so does his quarry (Stephen McNally). Aiding the latter is Vincent Price, a German posing as a Dutch importer of antiques (and guns for the Vietnamese revolutionaries).

ROGUES' REGIMENT

   Aiding Powell, though, is a French operative (Märta Torén) posing as a nightclub singer, and the latter are more than a match for the former. Quite predictably Powell falls for Miss Torén, who also gets to sing a song or two. Powell does not.

   The movie is enjoyable enough – there is no major skimping on the cast or the production values – but the biggest problem I had with the film is that it makes everything involved with catching ex-Nazis all too easy. Nearly a one-man job, in fact, if the one man happened to be Dick Powell.

ROGUES' REGIMENT