Trevor Lynch can wax eloquent over Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge Over the River Kwai, but when I choose a great movie hero from that era, forget Lawrence or Lt. Colonel Nicholson; my man is Jake Holman (Steve McQueen) in Robert Wise’s 1966 The Sand Pebbles, an epic action film examining a common man whose performance by Steve McQueen is an excellent depiction of a true, common, American.
Jake Holman is in the China of 1926, a machinist’s mate assigned to the San Pablo, a gunboat on duty in the backwaters. (more…)