Producer: Edwin H. Knopf. Copyright 25 November 1949 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at the Capitol: 22 February 1950. U.S. release: 6 January 1950. U.K. release: 16 January 1950. Australian release: 1 June 1950. 8,557 feet. 95 minutes. Alternate U.S. title: Alien Orders. U.K. release title: EAST OF THE RISING SUN.COMMENT: Disappointingly little action can be glimpsed in this over-talkative account of rubber smuggling in war-time Malaya. Not only is the screenplay irritatingly slow in getting under way, but Richard Thorpe's stolidly unimaginative, heavy-handed direction kills whatever promise the original yarn might have possessed. At times, would you believe, the script presents feeble echoes of Cacablanca, - for example in the sequence where George Folsey's camera caresses Cortesa singing "Those Little Things".The marquee interest stimulated by the teaming of Tracy and Stewart also proves a fizzer. Indeed, all the acting rates as disappointingly routine. Richard Loo's charming manners come across as no substitute for Casablanca's Claude Rains ("I'm just a corrupt public official"), while Sydney Greenstreet renders his customary characterisation with a glumly dispirited air that effectively conveys his total dissatisfaction with the movie in general and Thorpe's impersonal handling in particular. Keen-eyed fans will have to stay wide awake to catch sight of Gilbert Roland who has one of the smallest and least consequential roles of his career. Likewise Lionel Barrymore, whose two scenes do him little credit.To sum up, the picture falls resoundingly flat. Despite a tolerably large budget and a fair dollop of surface gloss, Malaya proves once again that even the strongest cast cannot survive a tepid script and dull direction.

Even with a better cast, this would not have been much of a film. On the surface it looks like it will be some sort of action film, with spies going into enemy territory to steal, or rather negotiate on the black market for, essential supplies. But there's little intrigue and very little action. Most of the scenes are simply characters sitting in chairs talking to one another. The surprise at the very end of the film is so far-fetched as to undercut the credibility of nearly everything else. The love story involves two people who have no reason to be attracted to one another. There are elements of Casablanca here, set in a country occupied by the enemy, a nightclub owner consorting with an enemy officer, the gambling being fixed by the owner to pay someone he wants to do a favour to, and a cynic acquiring higher ideals; but it's all a very pale imitation of Casablanca. Some comments suggest that there is something "noirish" about the film. Well. it's in black and white, but it does not have the requisite sense of evil and foreboding.But the biggest failure is in the casting. James Stewart is supposed to play a sour, hard-bitten, cynical operator who finds a little patriotism late in life. But Stewart can't help coming across as a nice guy. He may speak the tough words, but the tone is wrong. His eyes shift in that self-deprecating way of his, he carries himself in that modest way of his, and he just doesn't come off as the character he is supposed to be playing. When his partner is punching someone over and over in the face, Stewart looks repelled by the brutality. Spencer Tracy is probably even worse in his role as a tough jailbird who is let out of Alcatraz to help in the mission. He looks old; his figure is dumpy, his way of moving is slow. He threatens a man, but he doesn't seem very scary. (DeNiro would know how to do that.) He is the romantic interest of a nightclub singer who is crazy over him, yet he's way too old for her and doesn't have anything of the sort of animal magnetism that might make him believable as her lover. In fact, to be honest, there were moments when Tracy looked like he couldn't act. The Japanese have been beating him, trying to get him to talk; Tracy frowns a little but registers no pain, no discomfort, no fear; he shakes it off and then looks comfortable. When he dumps his girlfriend to keep her safe, his face shows nothing.I forced myself to watch to the end because I have an interest in Malaya. On its own terms, this movie would have lost me long before the mid-way point.

Interesting movie for fans of Stewart or Tracy or both. However, the script and plot are pretty funny, unintentionally in most cases. As mentioned in goofs, there is a shot of chimps, which are nowhere to be found in Malaysia except a zoo perhaps. Also I would be surprised if there was an actual Malay in the entire film. Especially humorous is Gilbert Roland, using Spanish here and there. Also the idea that a large ship could be camouflaged to make it appear as an island was ridiculous. Nice opening shot of Alcatraz, and as usual Tracy is believable and gruff, similar to his turn in Boom Town with Clark Gable. Also Sydney Greenstreet has a major supporting role. In Casablanca he had a blue parrot, here he has a cockatoo as sidekick...

If this movie did not have Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy, the film wouldn't have even merited a score of five. It was a very uninspiring and forgettable wartime film made several years after the war actually ended. It just seemed like all the energy was missing from the film. In fact, about the only energy came from Sidney Greenstreet's pet bird--now that bird can act! Another problem with the film is the idea of casting Spencer Tracy in the role of a selfish, devil-may-care smuggler in Alcatraz at the beginning of the film. The believability of the performance didn't improve once he made it to Malaya. This is actually the sort of role I might have expected for Clark Gable or maybe even Errol Flynn (yes, I know he was with a different studio), but for Tracy, an actor who often was cast as the priest or nice guy, it just wasn't terribly convincing. Plus, he just acted too nice to be as seedy as they described him as being.In the end, the only interesting thing about this film is how so much money was spent on the cast and so little bang was achieved for MGM's buck. This is purely a time-passer or film for those devotees of Stewart or Tracy.