Malaya (1949)

(On Cable TV, October 2019) Sometimes, casting is enough to make a film interesting. So it is that Malaya, now an obscure 1940s adventure film, is now worth a look simply because it features both Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy in fine form as the protagonists of the story. Set in the early days of WW2, the story is fuelled by the rubber shortages of the time, and the desperate efforts of American officials to build up the national supply. Suddenly, a journalist (Stewart) walks in with a hot tip: a vast deposit of rubber in Malaya, available to the highest bidder. But it’s not an entirely above-board transaction and so a convicted felon (Spencer Tracy, playing a harder character than usual) is asked to help out. Many adventures follow, especially once the urbane Stewart is out of his element in dangerous Japanese-controlled territory. Malaya isn’t a great movie, but it does have two great actors interacting in ways you wouldn’t necessarily predict from their screen persona, and enough eventful scenes to keep things interesting. The atmosphere of a United States newly embroiled in war is interesting in the film’s first act, then it’s off to a Hollywood-studio’s idea of what Malaysia felt at the time, complete with what we’d euphemistically call a folkloric depiction of the local population. It does end with a bang, and perhaps a plot point that we wouldn’t expect from those actors. Malaya won’t necessarily be interesting to anyone who’s not a fan of Stewart, Tracy or near-contemporary WW2 movies, but it’s serviceable enough as it is.