Movie Review: ****^ High Road to China (1983)

This movie is Tom Selleck at his best.  This is a 1983 adventure  movie based in the 1920s.  It was put out by Golden Harvest/Warner Brothers.  This movie was made in the wake of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."  Tom Selleck plays Patrick O'Malley, a pilot who teaches lessons, drinks too much and womanizes too much.  He and his two planes are offered employment by Eve Tozer (Bess Armstrong) who needs to find her father (Wilford Brimley) and get him to a British court, or he will be proclaimed dead by her father's partner in business, Bentik.  His partner is with out morals, and will do anything to get his way, including murder.  Jack Weston portrays Struts, his mechanic and drinking buddy. 
The movie is filmed in Yugoslavia.  O'Malley and Tozer fly all over, having great adventures looking for her father.  They fall into the hands of Suleman Khan, who wants to use the plans to drop bombs on the English.  This does not work out and O'Malley drops bombs on the Khan's camp instead, allowing his friends to escape.  They go farther and farther into the back country, arriving in Nepal.  The elder who tells them where to go to find her father advises, "The oz is slow, but the earth is patient."  Bentik sends a fighter pilot to stop their travels.  He destroys one of the planes, but O'Malley meets him in a dog fight with the other, which he wins of course.
They then travel to China where her father is conducting a war against a Chinese emperor.  Father explains that the company is not where the wealth is, but in the patents which are still in his and daughter's name.

This movie is fun.  It turns out to be romantic comedy in addition to adventure.  The two planes used are vintage, and not actually destroyed.