Famously, Tom Selleck had to pass up on the role of Indiana Jones when he was offered it, because he had recently signed on to star in Magnum, P.I. at the time. That role would go on to make his career so perhaps offered some consolation for missing out on Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it must have been pretty galling two years later when he made High Road to China and almost all critics dismissed it as a substandard Indiana Jones cash-in.
He stars in Brian G. Hutton’s film as a bi-plane pilot commissioned by a woman (Bess Armstrong) who needs help locating her father. (Spoiler: it turns out he’s in China.) Hutton was most famous for directing Where Eagles Dare and Kelly’s Heroes; this turned out to be his final film. He made a very wise decision when he hired John Barry to score the film – with romance at the heart of the story, he got the opportunity to explore that aspect of the film while also bringing his familiar action style to the film’s adventure components – and also got the opportunity to score some airborne romance a couple of years before so famously doing so in that scene in Out of Africa.
He wastes no time in presenting his glorious main theme, which soars immediately as the credits roll. I remember how passé people seemed to get about these romantic Barry themes back when he was still scoring films, presumably because there were so many of them. And yes, there were so many of them – and they are all glorious, all of them. What I wouldn’t give for someone to have the opportunity and the wherewithal to stick a theme like this on a film today – it soars away so majestically, it sticks so instantly in the memory – what a joy it is.
We hear the more adventurous side of the score in the following cue, “The Flying Lesson”, which has a delightfully playful feeling – Selleck’s beaming smile and moustache, personified in music. There’s a hint of action in “On to Waziri / Khan” and it’s quite similar in nature to that the composer wrote for the same year’s James Bond film, Octopussy. More dramatic, urgent action/adventure follows in “Escape from Waziri”.
The core action theme finally gets unleashed in full in “Eve and Struts” – there’s certainly an element of menace and clear conveyance of peril about it, but it’s also great fun – an old-fashioned piece of derring-do fit for an old-fashioned adventure romp of a film. There’s even a secondary love theme, heard a few times (example in “Tozer”) which is a little more melancholy and perhaps not as immediately striking as the primary one, but it’s still great.
Speaking of the primary one, as the score progresses we hear it several times (and it never outstays its welcome) and Barry introduces a bit of a variant with more florid orchestration, which he goes on to use to start off the wonderful end credits piece. High Road to China has been released on album surprisingly often – Quartet’s 2026 release however is the first to present the complete score as written (along with lots of source music and also the composer’s original album programme) and comes with terrific sound quality, as you’d expect. The score has action, adventure and romance in spades – nobody’s going to suggest it’s one of Barry’s best, but that’s only because Barry’s best were so good – it’s great!
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