Mjeteconer Just perfect...

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

clanciai This would not have been worth much seeing if it hadn't been for the expedition made from upper Egypt down to Libya with hardships and sandstorms and other frustrating complications along the way by Qattara (Remember "Ice Cold in Alex?" This was 140 years earlier.). This is the realistic part of the film, and it is the more interesting for taking place in 1805 - the war in question is that against Napoleon, which is never mentioned. Maureen O'Hara is a stranded countess courted by a local prince, John Payne runs into her by chance and gets trouble with her from the start, so it seems he just seeks her out to have someone to quarrel with. It's the usual story. Their quarrel and nagging goes on throughout the film until it's time for them to focus their interest on more important matters, like a navy which doesn't want to take orders from John Payne. The military battle in the end is just the usual tearing down the whole city stone by stone after first demolishing the interiors of every palace worth some sight-seeing. Howard de Silva saves the show as an intrepid Greek captain with a company of his own, and hardly anyone of the Americans would have survived without his contribution. It was the first time the American flag was planted outside the States and unfortunately not the last time. A silly story made as spectacular as possible and saved only by history and adventure, but the music throughout is excellent.

Robert J. Maxwell Every movie set in the Near East in the 40s and 50s had to have an interlude featuring dancing girls. I've always reveled in them. These are typical. Set to Lucien Cailliet's imaginative stereotypical score (oboes and drums), these half-dozen beauties whirl around and suffer abdominal contractions out of Martha Graham, followed by diaphanous veils and whatnot, but discretely dressed in harem pants and bustiers. No pipiks allowed.It's 1805 and the Barbary Pirates along the North African coast have been harassing ships plying the Mediterranean. President Jefferson decides to put a stop to it by barricading their port and sends a few naval ships and a detachment of US Marines to the shores of Tripoli. John Payne is picked to lead the group. Their uniforms are splashy enough to coagulate your eyeballs.So is Maureen O'Hara as the fiancée of the local sheik from whom Marine Lieutenant John Payne must recruit mercenaries to attack the outpost at Derne, overlooking Tripoli. She's stunning in her pastel gowns, orange flame lipstick, and eyelashes long enough to dust venetian blinds. Her comic sidekick is Connie Gilchrest, whose haimische New York accent no one tried to fix, thank God. Lieutenant Payne has the requisite earthy sergeant, Grant Withers, but it's the Victor McLaughlin role and Grant Withers looks and acts like he's been holding hands with a bottle for the past thirty years.Maureen O'Hara, outstanding in a few movies, including "Our Man in Havana," overacts outrageously, but then the director appears to have ordered everyone to overact, so the obviousness assumes a style of its own. If O'Hara is voicing an opinion that sounds suspicious and underhanded to Payne, he doesn't merely glance at her. He frowns, squints and stares directly at her for as long as she speaks. She's sassy, as usual, but the hero helps her find her identity as a compliant mate, as usual. If it isn't John Wayne it's John Payne.O'Hara's figure is fictional, delightfully so, but Presley O'Bannon was real, and so was the commander of the detachment, William Eaton, whose title was Naval Agent to the Barbary States. The titles matched the uniforms. In fact, the story, glamorized and given a commercial sheen in the Hollywood style of the period, sticks fairly close to historical fact, overlooking the occasional irritating inconsistencies that are found in real life. As in history, Payne hires a hundred or so mercenaries who turn out to be a mixed bag of Arabs and Greeks who don't like each other much.Situation report. I was never much of a technical writer and realize the observations above are a little entropic so let me summarize. Half way through the movie, John Payne is leading this motley of Arabs, Greek mercenaries, and ten Marines across the sand dunes of north Africa, with the intention of deposing the miserable wretch who is pirating our ships in the Mediterranean. Maureen O'Hara has her eyes on the wealthy Arab leader but Payne doesn't want her along and has forced her to travel with the "dancing girls." Payne and O'Hara hate each other but the discerning viewer knows how it will work out. There are the usual hazards of journeying across the desert -- lack of water, sandstorms, haboobs, intrigues, shifting allegiances. Some nice location shooting, apparently somewhere near Palm Springs. The model work and special effects are quite good too for the period.The ragtag army finally reaches the sea and gratefully draws supplies from the ships of the US Navy. The plan is to bombard the fort at Derna into submission, then have Payne and his unit charge into the rubble and mop things up. The great battle takes place.But guess what? The Arabs were a clever bunch. (They invented soap in the Middle Ages, but also algebra, an Arabic word, a dirty trick for which they can never be forgiven.) And here, just as the enemy seems about to lose Derna to the Marines, the Arabs break out thousands of hand grenades based on NUCLEAR FISSION and they blow Payne and his attackers to pieces, the disjecta membra thrown into the sea. And when the Arabs are done ravishing Maureen O'Hara, and event that has left her incandescent with pleasure, she too is flung off a cliff to the waiting Kraken. It's a tragedy, true, but an exceptionally light-hearted one.

bkoganbing Although Tripoli is never reached, this film is the story of the US Marines hoisting the American flag for the first time over foreign soil at the port city of Derna in Libya. Our capture of that city forced a negotiated peace on the Sultan of Tripoli and ended our war there which began against the Barbary States and the pirate ships they employed for plunder and ransom.Now how Maureen O'Hara as an exiled French countess in the court of the exiled Sultan figured in these events is something left to the writers of this film. At least her flaming red hair was explained somewhat in this particular potboiler.In her memoirs O'Hara thought her casting in these films was as ridiculous as anyone else, but she thought that just keep working, take anything they give you and the better roles will eventually come.John Payne plays the real life Lieutenant O'Bannion who with his squad of US Marines led the land action while the Navy bombarded the guns guarding Derna from sea attack. He did not have a romance with a French exiled countess. Howard DaSilva has a nice and droll part as a Greek mercenary captain. This flag waver of a film was an ironic twist in DaSilva's career, he went on the blacklist shortly afterward.Philip Reed is the exiled Sultan who lives pretty good for a guy in exile and he's the diplomatic catspaw the United States used. And I mean used since he was not restored to his throne as promised in the film and in real life. Of course as he's shown here Reed is quite the duplicitous character so nobody cares if he was or not. What he was in real life, who knows. But there are those who feel America broke a commitment. In any event the Sultan of Tripoli stopped seizing our ships and that's what we wanted.What is an interesting if not often told tale of American history is reduced to the Saturday matinée kiddie potboiler of the pulp fiction variety. Tripoli has not worn well over the decades.

silverscreen888 This is a strongly-scripted and well-made adventure film, with solid stars in Maureen O'Hara, John Payne and Howard da Silva . But its directorial history is a bit curious. Will Smith, then O'Hara's husband, had been wanting to direct. he got his chance with this movie and did a creditable job as producer and as director However, he had been cheating on her, so the couple divorced soon afterward and Price only directed two forgettable movies thereafter. The story told herein is of a mission featuring a force of US marines sent to combat the 18005 activities of the "Barbary Pirates", North African corsairs who were stopping the ships of other nations and robbing them or worse. The Marine's Hymn refers in the line "to the shores of Tripoli", to this same action. Maureen O'Hara, lovely and talented as ever, plays a French countess inexplicably betrothed to a local bigwig; Da Silva is humorous and excellent as a Greek mercenary hired to help Payne's marines find and destroy the pirates and their stronghold. Much of the film's footage concerns desert treks, during which the male-female conflict between Payne and O'Hara turns into something much more than mere instant dislike. There are some very -fine achievements connected with this attractive color production. James Wong Howe did the cinematography, Winston Miller and Price the script, Yvonne Wood the costumes, Alfred Kegerris the sets and Howard Pine the action and second- unit footage, which is far-above average. Those actors who contributed to this fast-moping and unusually-intelligent film included Philip Reed as the Countess's nefarious pursuer, Grant Withers, Connie Gilchrist, Alan Napier, Herbert Heyes, Lowell Gilmore, Grandon Rhodes and Rose Turich. There is a visually-exciting concluding battle and a happy ending. Favorite line: Greek da Silva modestly replying to US brass's thanks by saying, "Always glad to help a young country get started." A favorite film of mine, for several reasons; this is more than just a vehicle for the stars; it has dialogue, lovely scenic values and very good blocking, acting and overall production qualities.