Action of the Tiger
The movie opens with a beautiful French girl named Tracy (Martine Carol) combing the wharfs of Athens for Captain Carson (Van Johnson) whom she eventually finds in a shady bar in the middle of a poker game. She drops a wad of money on the table in front of him, telling him she has heard about him and needs his services. They leave the bar to talk business, Carson leaving his mate Mike (Sean Connery) behind after warning him to "stay off the sauce", which admonition Mike does not heed.Carson takes Tracy to some Greek ruins to talk, for she tells him she heard that he is a man who will do anything for money and she needs his boat to smuggle her into Communist Albania. Carson asks why, and she tells him she must see a man there. Carson, hard-boiled though he is, turns her down because he says she would never get out of the country alive if he did drop her off there.Carson leaves her to go back to the bar where he finds Mike in the middle of a free-for-all. Fighting every step of the way, Carson takes the drunken Mike out of the bar and they run to their boat a step ahead of the police and get away.To Carsons surprise and annoyance, he finds Tracy aboard who eventually talks him into letting her off in Albania for ten thousand dollars. He tells her it cannot be for long as the cargo he is hired to bring out of Albania is too perishable, but he does not tell her what the cargo is. Tracy, pleased at his agreeing to take her but angered by his mercenary attitude, calls him a "cut-price Galahad".When they near Albania, Carson goes ashore to send a wire to his contact Kol Stendho (José Nieto) in Albania, telling him where to meet him to pick up the cargo. When Carson gets back to the boat, he finds Tracy is having her hands full in avoiding the attentions of Mike, who is drunk again. Tracy ends up hitting him over the head with a bottle of perfume and knocks him out.Tracy finally tells Carson who she is and the man she wants to see in Albania is her brother; she will pay him extra to take him back with them too. Carson agrees until he realizes the man in question is a prominent French diplomat, a political figure the Communists will not be so anxious to let go of. He lets her know she must be satisfied with just seeing him.Landing in Albania, Carson and Tracy meet Kol Stendho who is waiting with the cargo: Greek children who were being held as hostages by the Communists. Carson and Kol Stendho have been smuggling them back to their parents in Greece. Tracy apologies to Carson for calling him a "cut-price Galahad", but Carson, still declaiming, tells Tracy he hates kids really, but their parents pay well.Kol tells Carson he will not permit Tracy to see her brother, let alone take him with them, as he is too dangerous. Carson tries to dissuade Tracy but she insists on at least seeing her brother. All she knows is that he disappeared from Moscow, she has not heard anything about him since, and she wants to know why.When Carson tells Kol to at least let her brother see Tracy, Kol answers him in a language that Tracy does not understand. Carson, sobered by whatever it is Kol has told him, says that now Tracy just has to see her brother. He promises Kol, though, that he will not take him out, only Tracy and the children, as arranged. Carson and Tracy leave with Kol.Night has fallen, and they are stopped at a checkpoint. When the guard discovers Carson and Tracy in the back of the truck, Kol silences him with a knife and they move on again until daylight.Kol stops the truck a few miles outside of their destination, and Carson and Tracy, leaving Kol to wait for them, walk towards the little village where Tracys brother is. Carson expresses concern as to how far he can trust Kol Stendho, since he has blackmailed him into helping them this far.Once they reach the village, which seems deserted, they hear organ music. Running to the church, Tracy finds her brother, Henri (Gustavo Rojo). He has no guards, because he is blind. Carson notices with some concern a girl watching them, who then slips out a back door.Tracy, now realizing what it was that Kol told to Carson about her brother, brokenly tells Henri that she has come to take him home, to which he reacts joyfully, until he realizes that it will be without the government's consent which means danger to them all.He tells his sister how he had changed his mind, but where he was, he was not allowed to change his mind. He tried to escape through suicide, but only brought himself blindness. The Communists then hid him away in Albania, and that was why Tracy could find no word of him since then. His sister tells him that nevertheless, she intends taking him with her, with the help of Carson, who is, she says, a very brave man. She turns to Carson and asks him, now that she thinks she knows him better, if he has the heart to refuse them? He does not.Carson makes a resistance against Tracys pleas, but, moved in spite of himself by the brother and sister's plight, eventually agrees to take them both with him, even though he knows he must forfeit Kol Stendho's help in doing so.Henri summons a little boy, Abdyll (Richard Williams), the organ pumper, to whom he has taught English and French, and has him lead them to the Countess, the last of the old Albanians. Henri says she is a little eccentric, but she is sympathetic as she hates the Communists.They arrive and meet the Countess Valona ([nm0370848]) and her granddaughter Mara (Anna Gerber), the latter of whom Carson recognizes at the girl he saw in the church with Henri.Henri asks the Countess if she thinks it would be wrong of him to go with them, knowing that the Albanian police will be on the lookout for them all. She replies that even if they were taken without him, they would still be shot, and it would be impolite to refuse going with them.Henri bitterly regrets having put Tracy and Carson in danger, but says that even in his dark world he has found other reasons for living. Mara places her hands gently on his shoulders, and the old Countess, prompted by what she sees between Henri and Mara, asks Carson to take her granddaughter with them, as she will be needed.Mara, although unwilling to leave her grandmother, agrees to go when Carson agrees to take her too. They all thank Carson, who says they had better be moving.Meanwhile, as this is going on, Kol, who is waiting with the truck to take Carson, Tracy, and the children to the rendezvous with the boat, grows impatient, and realizing he can wait no longer, drives away, giving up on meeting with Carson and Tracy.Carson, Tracy, Henri, and Mara leave on horseback. While on the road, they hear a jeep coming and hide in the woods on the side of the road. The jeep goes by, carrying the security police and Kol Stendho, much to Carsons surprise.As they prepare to move on again, they hear someone coming after them who turns out to be Abdyll; he asks to come with them as well. Carson replies "Well, what well-equipped boat doesn't have an organ pumper?" and the little boy falls in with them.Back at the Countesss, we find Kol Stendho, in charge of the police, roughly questioning the Countess as to the whereabouts of Carsons party. She does not tell them, and they leave.Carson, returning to where he left his cargo of children waiting for him and where they had hoped to rendezvous with Mike and the boat, finds two more police waiting as well. They attempt to arrest him, but through a trick, Carson gets in a fight with the two men, knocks one out, and just as the other one fires at Carson with a rifle, Tracy shoots and kills the man with a small gun.Tracy, shocked at having killed a man, begins to cry after dropping the gun, which the smallest of the children picks up to play with and secrets, unnoticed by either Carson or Tracy.Mara tells Carson that the children said the police came and Kol Stendho left with them. Carson assumes that he was arrested and feels sorry for him.They decide to wait there, still hoping to meet the boat, but just then a jeep with two security guards arrive and Carson kills one and drives the other off. Now, with the alert spread about them, they have to leave the horses and take out across country on foot for the Greek border, forgetting about the boat.Carson, Tracy, Henry, Mara, and five little children then begin the long hike across the barren hills of Albania, trying to avoid the security police who are searching for them.Their first obstacle comes at a checkpoint. The guard there has not heard about them yet, and Carson and the others begin walking past, almost bluffing it out that they are distinguished Bulgarian Communists, until the guard's telephone rings.Carson orders him through Mara not to answer, but the guard goes for his gun and Carson must shoot him as well. They then run on as quickly as they can.Next, the party comes to a farm. The farmer and his wife take them in and give them food and shelter for the night. Carson, in spite of his rough language throughout, is drawn to the children and they to him, so much that they won't go to sleep until he tells them goodnight.The farmer tells Carson that he can let them have a mule and cart tomorrow, and assures Carson the roads will be fairly safe to travel by as all the people thereabouts hate the Communists.Later that night, Tracy apologizes to Carson for getting him and the children involved in her and Henri's trouble. She tells him she doesn't think he did it for the money, to which Carson, still declaiming, says he did. Tracy even goes so far as to propose to Carson, but he tells her a man on the move has to travel light.She says she doesn't weigh too much, and gets so far as a kiss, but they are interrupted in the middle by one of the little boys asking for Mista Carson, who wants what most small children want in the middle of the night. Carson, picking the little fellow up, indicates to Tracy how families are trouble.Next morning, Kol and the police find the body of the dead checkpoint guard, and deduce where Carsons party is heading: to the Greek border.At the farmer's, just when Carson and the others are preparing to leave, he sees the farmers two children also being added to his charge to take to Greece. He groans, "Oh, no!" but Tracy simply says, "Oh, yes!" and they move off, now with seven little children in tow.On the road again, Carson, Tracy, Henri, and some of the children walking beside the road, Mara and the rest of the children in the cart, they are observed and inspected by another patrol. Carson's party hide in the brush, and Mara is able to bluff the guards who leave them.Later, on a mountain road, the mule goes lame and they are forced to leave it. Mara and Carson spot a camp of shepherds; they go there as night falls and receive hospitality from them.Just then, the Communists storm down on them all with trucks and jeeps, taking Carson's party prisoner and killing the poor shepherds.On their sad way back, Tracy, even in the midst of her regret and sorrow, is on the verge of getting Carson to admit his feelings for her, when suddenly the Communists are attacked from ambush by Albanian bandits.The Communists are killed, and the leader of the bandits, one Trifon (Herbert Lom), introduces himself to the now liberated prisoners and takes them to his fathers village in the hills.Once there, Trifon introduces his father (Norman Macowan), head of the tribe, and his sister Katina (Yvonne Romain), who is quite taken with the men of the party.Trifon himself is quite smitten with Tracy, and during the banquet that evening, takes no pains to disguise the fact. When Tracy asks Carson to assist her in discouraging Trifons attentions, he treats it lightly. Tracy, then trying to make Carson jealous, returns Trifon's passionate kiss. Her maneuver succeeds a little too well; Carson knocks Trifon down in anger, and the bandit then draws a gun.Fortunately, the fight is broken up by Trifon's father, who tells Trifon that they are guests in his house and that there will be no more kissing that evening, just dancing.Next day, Trifon pays Tracy a call and tells her that unless she agrees to stay with him, he will see to it that none of the others will make it to the Greek border. She tells him that even if she agreed, Carson would not let her under those circumstances, but Trifon has that worked out: Tracy will go with them to the Greek border, and then she will say she wants to stay with Trifon. He will trust her so far if she swears like officer, which Tracy, brokenhearted but thinking of the others, does.Trifon and his men then begin escorting Carson and the others to the border. Just a few miles from the Greek border as night falls, they encounter a strongly held checkpoint in a mountain pass. They form a plan to have Trifons men lead an onslaught in the valley, distracting the main outpost, while the others take out the little outpost on the mountain path, allowing them to get by.But when they climb to the ledge above the valley, they find it more strongly guarded than they had expected, more than they can handle without their men. They contemplate a surprise attack, but just then Trifons men, anticipating the signal, lead a premature charge on the guards in the valley below, alerting the men at the small outpost. Carson suggests that one man climbing the mountain face could still drop a bomb on the machine gun nest below, allowing the party to get by.At this point Trifon says he and Tracy are returning to the camp; it is up to Carson to do the mountaineering to get the others through.Carson, confronting Tracy about it, sees that she is sacrificing herself for them. She has sworn to go with Trifon, and begs Carson not to try the climbing, as he is inexperienced and will be killed. He replies what else can he do?Carson begins the treacherous ascent of the mountain face. Trifon tells Tracy to come with him, but she says she wont go with him unless he helps Carson. She accuses him of running away while he leaves a braver man than he is to die.Meanwhile, Carson has dislodged a rock before getting into the right place to throw the bomb; the guards at the outpost see him and begin firing at him.Trifon, spurred to action by Tracy's angry words, leads his men in a charge against the outpost to prove his courage and is fatally wounded.Carson, during the fight, is able to blow the outpost up, effectually winning the battle. They thank Trifon before he dies, and charge his men to tell his father he died like a brave soldier. They then move on.Dawn; their long journey is almost over. They come in sight of what looks like the border. Running happily over to it, their rejoicing is brought up short when Communist guards surround them and take them prisoner. The outpost was a fake, and the Greek border is still out of their reach.The entire party is taken to where they first began their journey, where Mike was supposed to meet them today with the boat. There, Carson is brought face to face with Kol Stendho, in his official capacity as officer in charge.Henri entreats him to let the others go and keep only him, but Kol tells him it is too late for that; they have attracted too much attention and too many men have died. In front of his men, Kol orders Carson to have Mike bring the boat in where they can take it when he arrives. When Kol threatens the children, Carson agrees to do it.Kol orders his lieutenant (Anthony Dawson) outside to wait for the boat. When he is alone with Carsons party, he tells them he is still their friend; he was forced to act his part as a Communist security guard, but he wants to leave the country now as much as they do, leave with his own two children who have already joined the others outside.Kol tells them his plan: he will go down to the dock with them to wait for the boat, pretending to keep them at gunpoint, while he will order his men to hide up in the rocks until he gives them the order to fire. Then when Mike brings the boat to the dock, Carson will load the children and the others onto the boat, and hopefully they can get away before Kols own men realize what he is doing and open fire.It is dangerous, they know, but they agree it is the only plan left to them.But, unaware to Kol and Carson, is the fact that Kols lieutenant, spying on his superior, has overhead their plans, and has now determined to take over command.Kol, Carson, Tracy, and the others go down to the dock just as Mike is bringing the boat up, but the crafty lieutenant takes Kol's gun and gets the drop on all of them. He orders them to bring the boat in, as originally planned.Carson yells to Mike, who sees something is wrong and begins to bring up a gun, not to fire as the Communists have them all covered, including the kids.Tracy, realizing what will soon be coming, begins tearfully saying goodbye to all the children, whom she has grown to love. As she does so, the littlest boy, who had picked up the gun several days earlier and who had been playing with it all along, unnoticed by Carson or Tracy, points playfully, saying "Boom! Boom!" Tracy quickly takes it secretively and slips it to Carson, without letting the lieutenant see it. Just as the lieutenant is about to call his men down from the rocks, Carson sticks the little gun in his back and warns him to continue playing along with them.The boat comes up to the dock; Carson orders Kol to get the women and children aboard with Henri. The guards on the cliff, puzzled as to what is going on down below, holding their fire the while. When it is only Carson and Kol on the dock, Carson gives Kol and calls to Mike to throw him a machine gun.Before Mike can do so, the lieutenant whirls and catches Kol off guard. After a brief struggle, the lieutenant manages to shoot Kol in the shoulder, and Carson turns to grapple with him. The guards are still holding their fire, unwilling to hit their officer.Tracy and Mara manage to get Kol aboard the boat, and Carson orders Mike to pull away, which Mike does, returning the hail of bullets which the Communists at length let loose at them.Carson, left alone on the dock grappling with the lieutenant, eventually pitches into the water when his opponent is shot.A line is thrown from the retreating boat, which Carson manages to grab hold of. He is drug threw the water followed by bullets and bombs from the Communists, fortunately all aimed in vain.At last, they are all under way to safety.Tracy, below in the cabin, is dressing Kol's wound. Carson, still wet, enters and tells Kol that his children are asking for him, and he leaves.Tracy, in the middle of an embrace, asks Carson if he is still the man on the move, still traveling light, to which he replies he is, but that its getting heavier all the time. As they begin a kiss, one of the children is heard behind them saying "Mista Carson, Mista Carson.""You see", says Carson to Tracy as they regard the little fellow in the doorway, "Marriage, families, trouble!""But, you know," responds Tracy, "I like trouble.""Well, that's with just one of them. Guess what it will be like with a large family.""Mmm, but I like large families.""You do?" Carson asks."Mm hm, very large." Tracy answers."You know something," returns Carson, "you might easily end up with one."They kiss, and the camera pans to the little boy, who, realizing he might have a bit of a wait, sits down, while over the scene comes the lines from Shakespeares immortal Henry V which gives the title to the movie:"In peace theres nothing so becomes a man
as modest stillness and humility:
but when the blast of war blows in our ears,
then imitate the action of the tiger."The End
melodrama