Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

michaelb-21 Very nice looking movie; the restored DVD from VCI fixed up a lot of grain on other DVD releases. Good use of an actual old locomotive; and the Spanish locations do a good job of looking like India. One nice point (a mild spoiler): the two Indian soldiers on the train survive the film, and are useful during the entire journey. Go Team Redshirt! The child actor is much more agreeable than most.

towton2 This is certainly not a pro-British film as it is the American (Lauren Bacall) who is the real heroine. Kenneth More is marvellous as British army Captain and Herbert Lom brilliant as the 'baddy' in the story but my favourite character must be Gupta,the engine driver,played by the Pakistani born actor I S Johar,who really impresses me with his loyalty to the Crown and his engers on his beloved 'Victoria' steam engine.Mr Johar's acting in this part deserved an award and actually brought a tear to my eye during the film more than once. The whole film is first rate and an insight into the latter days of the Raj which everyone can watch and become involved.I can honestly advise anyone who has not seen it that they have missed a treat.Next time it is on TV watch it.

tieman64 "One day in front of the Municipal Office I saw a little girl trying to drink her mother's milk. But the girl did not realise that the mother was dead." - Bhovani Shen Directed by J. Lee Thompson, and filled with astonishing widescreen photography, "North West Frontier" spends its first ninety minutes conning you into thinking you're watching a great film about the British Empire's bloody misadventures in India.The plot? Kenneth More plays Captain Scott, a dashing British Army officer tasked with protecting Prince Kishan, the young son of an Indian King. In this regard, Scott escorts Kishan out of a besieged fortress and into a rickety old steam train. In this train, Scott hopes to evade the Prince's attackers, a band of Muslims who are part of a nationwide uprising. Also on the train are a doctor's wife who "detests soldiers" (Lauren Bacall), an anti-colonialist journalist (Herbert Lom), an opinionated arms dealer, a chauvinistic aristocrat and various other British ex-pats. In other words, the train is populated by a cross-section of figures who offer interesting and conflicting perspectives on late 19th century Imperialism.One must that the 1950s, 60s and 70s saw the British Empire begin granting independence to its colonies. As these social reconfigurements took place, Great Britain felt the need to rehabilitate its past and rationalise the "good old days" of Empire-building. These outbursts of patriotism (and "revisionism") also served the more important task of helping to distract from the erection of new forms of exploitation and/or control. The year of "North West Frontier's" release, for example, British Colonialism was still killing hundreds of thousands in Kenya. British rule of India, whether it be directly during the years of the Raj, or during the years of the East India Company, was likewise responsible for countless deaths (almost two billion over an almost 2 century period). Divide-and-conquer tactics were used, local kings and rebels were armed against one another, taxes were used to cripple locals, land was taken from Indians, India itself was turned into a giant factory for export, nourishing crops were destroyed in favour for producing textiles and opium for foreign markets, designed famines were rife, uprisings were violently crushed and so forth. In addition to this, the usual racist attitudes were prevalent, Indians uniformly viewed as subhuman. Winston Churchill, for example, would bluntly state "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion" and Lord Hastings would describe Indians as "mere animals", "limited", "with no higher intellect than a dog or monkey".Though "North West Frontier's" premise initially allows for a nuanced view of the Britsh Raj, it finally degenerates into Empire Denial. The Muslim rebels are ultimately evil and horde-like (how dare they kill cute kids!), the Hindu Kings are "thankless" fools who betray a Britain which gallantly risked life and limb to both protect the people and maintain "local order", and pacifist women (Bacall) learn to "appreciate soldiers". The train in the film is itself nicknamed "Victoria", the late 19th century queen who oversaw most of the Raj's worst excesses. In the film, Victoria does the opposite, providing stability, safe-haven and protection to her disparate engers.Interestingly, "North West Frontier" was co-written by Patrick Ford, son of John Ford. The film itself plays like a John Ford picture, with dusty heroes, stagecoaches under attack, marauding hordes of faceless Indians and a landscape dotted with cavalry charges and military outposts. Though the film ultimately ends on a reactionary note (Captain Scott is never anything less than a hero), its first three acts are somewhat complex for an adventure film, and director J. Lee Thompson's direction is impeccable, with compositions reminiscent of David Lean, excellent location shooting and several fine set-pieces.7.5/10 – See Pontecorvo's "Burn", "Guns at Batasi" and "Decision Before Dawn". Read J. G. Farrell's excellent "The Siege of Krishnapur".

Robert J. Maxwell I think I enjoyed this a bit more when I saw it years ago. Now that I'm so terribly sophisticated, I notice the clichés leaping out at me, fangs bared. Will the train make it, slowly creeping along the rickety bridge? Will the bus ("The Wayward Bus")? Will the car ("Murder by Death")? Will the explosive-laden truck ("Sorcerer II," "The Wages of Fear")? But, what the heck. This is a headlong adventure through the deserts and mountains of North West India in 1905. Everything shouts at you and ends in an exclamation point. The acting is outrageous. Even the fastidious Wilfred Hyde-White is outrageously fastidious. The principal heavy, Herbert Lom, sweats like a pig, an animal that he, as a Muslim, hates.There is an attempt on the part of the writers to inject some serious matters into the story. A boy of five is the surviving Prince of India, presumably a Hindu, while the villains are a radical Muslim sect. "Not all Muslims" the bloody rebellion, as one character remarks. And the British colonials talk about how their presence is needed to "keep order" while all about them thousands of Indians are slaughtering each other. At the end, the young Prince gives a present to the hero, Kenneth More, but comment ruefully that someday he will have to fight the Brits. Largely because of Ghandi, the Brits, of course, eventually did leave India to its own devices. At the time, it didn't lead to an improvement since the Hindus and Moslems immediately went to war and finally split into two or three independent nations.This hardly matters to the colorful story of a handful of disparate men, women, and children trying to survive a three-hundred mile journey through a hostile land on a dilapidated train with one coal car and one coach. It's a generic "journey" movie that we've all seen before -- in "Stagecoach" and elsewhere, but it's a lot of fun. I love those old narrow-gauge Indian trains with their diminutive piping whistles.Do they get to the end of their journey successfully and (mostly) in one piece? Two old puff-puffs pulling my extremities in opposite directions couldn't get me to spill the beans.