7cb1d79195 Misadventures of an ambitious unlucky Irishman who goes on a long and arduous trip to Africa along with his wife and bumbling cousin in hopes of starting a trucking business there. Vic Brennan persuades his family to put up money for him and his wife to leave Dublin for the remote African town of Jebanda in order to start up a truck-hauling business. The family agrees to give Vic the money under the stipulation that his bumbling cousin Samuel goes with him to protect their investment. Their misadventures during their long trip along the Ivory Coast include a hijacking, catching a deadly fever, near drowning, thirsty natives and broken trucks. Except for the beginning which takes place in a chic wealthy sullen family -which does not fit well in the main plot-,&quot;linear&quot; best describes this movie.A minor movie for highly talented Richard Fleischer who had already directed Juliette Greco in &quot;crack in the mirror&quot; the year before.Greco has some lines in French with her compatriots Fernand Ledouxa customs officer and Jacques Marin.Which is very useful to her Irish husband Stephen Boyd.<br/><br/>It&#39;s the story of the odyssey of a lorry through the jungle and its fevers ,its thieves ,its precipices and its rivers in spate .A critic called it &quot; a cross between &quot;African Queen&quot; and &quot;Le Salaire De La Peur&quot; (wages of fear).Some of the scenes were more or less &quot;inspired&quot; by HG Clouzot&#39;s work (1953)but &quot;Gamble&quot; never reaches its level of intensity.Boyd ,Greco and David Wayne team up for better of for worse,and armed up with three hundred boxes of canned beer,they struggle against a hostile nature. This movie about the struggles of a crew of three to get a lorry filled with a cargo of beer to it&#39;s final destination was a favorite late-night movie of my sister&#39;s (and mine). The story, at times, left something to be desired…but the acting was good, and the emotions of the characters really came through. (Imagine how you would feel if you were stuck delivering a truck full of beer to some remote village, and everything that could go wrong, did.) I gave it a ten. (Nostalgia probably played a part in that rating.) Definitely worth the watch… if you can find it, that is.
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