This film’s take on pacifism hasn’t aged well (here, it’s merely cowardice and is cured through shame) and war glorification of this sort went out around the same time as unironic cone bras. Still, this British film survives the years as entertaining nonetheless and notable for how it helped write the book on how to put adventure stories on screen in the sound era. No, it’s not the first Technicolor adventure film. It’s also not the first film to be shot on location in an exotic locale (here, the deserts of the Sudan). And Miklós Rózsa isn’t the first composer to provide a film with a big and rousing music score. The way this film mixes it all together though echoes through the next several decades of swashbucklers, hair-raisers and purveyors of truly transporting international intrigue. An adventure story should be more spectacular than the other films around it. The skies should be bluer, the vistas should be wider and the music should be louder. This hit from the Alexander Korda movie machine helped to set that bar.