The Sand Pebbles

The Sand Pebbles

This is the heroic story of the men on the U.S.S. San Pablo who disturbed the sleeping dragon of savage China as the threatened world watched in breathless terror.

PG-13 1966 · 196 min · ★ 7.2 · Drama, War

Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat USS San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the 'rice-bowl' system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.

Directed by Robert Wise · Written by Robert Anderson

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Cast

Steve McQueen Jake Holman
Richard Attenborough Frenchy Burgoyne
Richard Crenna Captain Collins
Candice Bergen Shirley Eckert
Mako Po-han
Larry Gates Jameson
Charles Robinson Ensign Bordelles
Simon Oakland Stawski
Ford Rainey Harris
Joe Turkel Bronson
Gavin MacLeod Crosley
Joe Di Reda Shanahan

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