When you see in the credits that the Chinese villain, Yang, is played by Lee J. Cobb, and the hero's girl friend, Yin, is played by Jean Porter, you know at once you're in trouble. When you see Bogart show up in a priest's outfit, any lingering doubts are dispelled. When we get around to the dozen cute native children singing "My Old Kentucky Home" first in English, then in Chinese, you realize you should have followed the advice of the Roman philosopher Seneca and always expect less than you expected to get.

Actually, Bogart is not a priest but a pilot for some unnamed Air Force who has been pressed into the service of some Chinese warlord and was only able to make his escape from forced servitude in disguise. At the end, he risks his own life for the safety of two villages (one Protestant, one Catholic) by playing dice with the Chinesed-up Lee J. Cobb. It's a big risk. But the atheistic Bogart is warmed by a feeling of luck being on his side. In other words, he has found "faith". Yes, it's an epiphany. Bogart at once joins a Trappist monastery in Tennessee and takes vows of silence, poverty, and celibacy. His only problem is that he doesn't want the usual monk's tonsure because he claims all he needs to do is remove his toupee. But his commitment pays off. Later he is canonized in the Korean war.

They turned Malibu canyon into China, and it looks alright, though of course the hills of the Coast Range crowd the horizon, blocking off the traffic on the Coast Highway. The director, Edward Dmytryk, had given us some challenging films earlier in his career -- "Sniper," "Crossfire", "The Young Lions" -- but by this time in his career, after some difficulties during the McCarthy era, he seemed pretty fagged out. Humphrey Bogart more or less walks through the part. His mind may have been elsewhere; he was dying. But the part isn't really exciting anyway. Neither is Gene Tierney's, as Bogart's love interest. She was having serious psychiatric problems. Bogart urged her to get professional help and she went through shock treatments at one of the oldest mental health facilities in the country, where I once gave a lecture, come to think of it. For a Chinese villain, Lee J. Cobb is pretty chilled. Smiling, relaxed, smoking a cigar. He never gets overwrought as he did in "Twelve Angry Men," although the role would have permitted it.

All in all, a feeling of pattern exhaustion pervades the movie. It doesn't look as if anyone was having much fun, American OR Chinese. Well, maybe Philip Ahn liked the paycheck, but he's Korean.

You know, I just realized something. The two most prominent "Chinese" roles are named Yin and Yang. Are they kidding?

Considering it provides a rare opportunity to see Bogart in colour, is set during the civil war in China, Bogart pretends to be a gun-toting priest in his most bizarre role since playing a vampire over fifteen years earlier in 'The Return of Dr X' and Lee J. Cobb plays a Chinese warlord, you come out of it thinking "is that it?"

Bogart looks very old and tired, but he and the rest of the cast all do good work; although Victor Young's obtrusive score over-eggs the pudding as usual.

Interesting that The Left Hand of God should be directed by Edward Dmytryk one of the famed Hollywood 10 and the only one to recant and admit his Communist Party involvement so he could beat the blacklist and resume work. Dmytryk like Bogart in the film pretended he was something he wasn't and submitted himself for a kind of absolution.

Flier James Carmody is shot down while flying the hump in Kuomintang China during the Thirties and he's shot down in an isolated area where Chiang Kai-shek's writ doesn't run. He gets drafted into warlord Lee J. Cobb's army and then deserts, using the disguise of a recently deceased priest who got himself deceased by one of Cobb's men.

Like William Holden in Bridge Over the River Kwai, Carmody played by Bogart is forced by circumstance to keep up the appearance. He wins over a lot of the villagers where the deceased priest was headed for. And he also wins over missionary lady Gene Tierney. And he becomes involved in a rather dubious miracle that saves the village.

The key here is that Bogart is a lapsed Catholic himself in the film. Otherwise the whole thing would have no meaning whatsoever. Even so, I'm still dubious myself about Bogart's attitude when all's said and done.

Plot elements can be found as I said in The Bridge on the River Kwai and later on it was played for comedy in a military setting when Glenn Ford pretended he was a general in Imitation General in an obscure corner of the European theater in World War II.

Bogey fans will consider this film a must, others can take or leave it.