From
From this week’s Fayetteville Flyer:
“Northern Pursuit”
“Though he was Australian-born, Errol Flynn was one of the United States’ most popular commodities during World War II.
Flynn made a name for himself swashbuckling across the silver screen in such classics of the 1930a as 1935’s “Captain Blood” and 1938’s “Adventures of Robin Hood,” but during the early 1940s few Hollywood stars made more of a splash in war pictures than Flynn. Films like 1941’s “Dive Bomber” and 1942’s “Desperate Journey” cemented him as one of Hollywood’s greatest stay-at-home warriors.
One of Flynn’s most overlooked pictures “Northern Pursuit” comes from the same era and is set against a World War II backdrop as he stars as Steve Wagner, a former corporal in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that goes undercover to root out a covert Nazi scheme.
The film, which Turner Classic Movie channel is scheduled to play at 7 p.m. (CT) Tuesday was Flynn’s first movie after being acquitted of two statutory rape charges in 1942. Though Flynn’s was never as popular after the trial as he was before, he still knew how to carry adventure movies and romance pictures alike.
“Northern Pursuit” is a solid thriller, directed by the capable Raoul Walsh, who also directed Flynn in the Gen. George Armstrong Custer biopic “They Died With Their Boots On” in 1941.
Walsh amps up the tension and leaves the viewer questioning whether Flynn is a turncoat or not through much of the movie which co-stars Julie Bishop, Helmut Dantine, John Ridgely, and Gene Lockhart.
Avalanche!
— Tim
David DeWitt
May 2, 2019 at 3:10 am
Recently saw this film and had not seen it in years! Have it in my DVD collection finally!