Review of Tropic Zone

Tropic Zone (1953)
5/10
How can you make a film about a banana plantation exciting?
21 November 2022
You can't.

Rhonda Fleming (who looks spectacular, as always) plays the owner of a banana plantation in the Caribbean which is on the verge of going belly up. Enter Ronald Reagan, who saves the day.

Seems Reagan is a political escapee from somewhere (probably where the Democrats are still in control), so he is in this country illegally. Nasty John Wengraf, who wants to buy out Fleming, blackmails Reagan into helping him wreck the plantation. Reagan pretends to go along, but you know at some point he is going to kick somebody's butt.

The highlight of the film occurs about halfway through, with a pretty good six minute brawl. Reagan cleans house, and Fleming gets the top of her dress torn off. The rest of the film is slow going. Estelita Rodriguez sings a few songs, and Noah Beery Jr. Takes a nice part as Reagan's buddy. Grant Withers plays Fleming's drunken and former foreman.

The climax features Reagan, Fleming, et al trying to transport 8000 banana stems to a dock so that the Tropic Fruit Company will give Fleming a contract. This may have expired the Exodus sequence from "The Ten Commandments."
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