Rating of
3.5/4
Basically "Casablanca"...except with diamonds!
Indyfreak - wrote on 12/10/14
An irresistibly charming "Casablanca" redux which goes as far as reining in Claude Rains, Paul Henried, and Peter Lorre as their corresponding characters in that film. However, Paul Henried gets to play two roles in one: the jilted lover and the spiteful Nazi. Granted, he's not actually a Nazi nor are there any in "Rope of Sand" but he's playing a uniformed German that has foot-soldiers and drives armored vehicles in the desert in a 1940s movie so yea, he's a Nazi in my book. The script is nearly identical to that of "Casablanca" which only differs in regard to its Macguffin (in here, it's a cache of diamonds). Despite its slavish devotion to the formula devised by that 1942 classic, "Rope of Sand" is a highly entertaining blend of safari intrigue and postwar film-noir.
