Lord Jim Reviews

This stunningly exotic film of Conrad's classic features O'Toole in the title role. He serves an apprenticeship at sea under the protective eye of Hawkins and later graduates to first officer of a tramp liner, the Patna, which carries religious passengers on an awful passage in which the ship is mercilessly lashed by a hurricane. In a moment of desperation, the idealistic O'Toole abandons the ship and leaves its passengers to their fate. The craft survives, although many of its passengers are drowned, and O'Toole loses his license and sinks into waterfront obscurity. To redeem himself, O'Toole agrees to take a shipment of dynamite from Lukas and deliver it to a tribe of natives in uncharted territory. The tribe is in bondage to oppressive warlord Wallach. Surviving ambushes and treachery from his own crew members, O'Toole manages to get the explosives to the settlement and hide the barrels, exploding one to make Wallach and his henchmen believe that the entire shipment has been destroyed. Wallach captures O'Toole and tortures him, but native girl Lavi helps him escape. He joins the natives and organizes an attack on the fortress, a seesaw battle that finally sees O'Toole and the natives triumph and Wallach killed. Jurgens, however, escapes to join river pirate Mason, and they muster their forces to return to the fortress to obtain Wallach's fabulous cache of jewels stolen from the natives. O'Toole greets the thieves with a cannon shot that decimates them, but the son of the native chief is killed in the encounter and, to make up for the death, O'Toole nobly sacrifices his own life at the finish. Beautifully photographed by Young and tightly directed by Brooks, LORD JIM is moving and suspenseful. Shot on location in Cambodia and Hong Kong.