In 1926, the US gunboat San Pablo was on patrol in the Yangtze River and got tangled up in the local politics, several sailors and Chinese were killed and the incident almost caused a war between the USA and China. The Sand Pebbles (which was what the crew called themselves) tells the story of these matters in an earnest sort of way. Although the ever-reliable Robert Wise directed the film, you couldn’t help feeling it was a bit of a white-wash—admittedly we know a lot more about the American way of defending its interests in foreign countries than we did in 1965 when the book was published—but there’s a serious taint of bias here. The first warning is that Steve McQueen plays the troublesome sailor who allegedly caused all the problems, so it comes off as a bit of an accident—the innocent precipitating events that escalate beyond control. I’m afraid these days we would all be rather more inclined to believe the Chinese version—that it was all the result of trigger-happy Yanks.
    In addition, the Americans are all decent, upstanding citizens while the Chinese—apart from a couple of noble coolies—are all menacing gangsters or ruthless warlords in officer’s uniforms. It just doesn’t wash. And McQueen’s romance with a missionary school teacher (Candice Bergen) truly suspends disbelief unreasonably. Then there’s the puzzling matter of a British actor (Richard Attenborough) playing and American sailor named Frenchy—no explanation offered… but I’m quibbling now.
    All in all, perhaps it’s best to forget the history and simply regard it as a rollicking adventure yarn set in an exotic location and a more naïve time, at which level it comes off pretty well. It’s based on a novel anyway, by one Richard McKenna, and might be the only American movie where all three male leads get killed unheroically in the end.