The Sand Pebbles is one of those unconventional war movies that deserves far more recognition than it gets. Both for the performances and the matter that it treats. The eight Academy award nominations are well deserved, that it did not win any of them is very much undeserved.
Once again, Steve McQueen turned out a brilliant acting job. A cool, quiet unassuming navy engineer with more backbone than any other sailor on the ship. If there's three things Steve played well in his career, its characters that are cool and quiet, characters with a lot of backbone, and making all those cool, quiet, steely characters unique. And it's not just Steve that pulled off a great performance in this one. In this film we get the shining performances from the supporting cast. In particular, we get to see a young Candice Bergen shine as the love interest. It's a good reminder that she was a talented actress prior to her career of poking fun at Dan Quayle.
And the historical matter is quite interesting too.
The Sand Pebbles is set around an American gunship caught in the middle of the Chinese Revolution. An odd sort of perspective as it was a conflict where the Americans were caught in the middle of something they had no interest in. It's nice to see a war film that isn't on one of the World Wars, Vietnam, or the Gulf. McKenna and Anderson deserve a bit of recognition for doing a bit of research and writing something other than one of the old Hollywood formulae.