TYCOON (1947) * ½

John Wayne stars as a railroad engineer who is blasting out a mountain so the titular tycoon (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) can run his railroad through it.  The snobby tycoon looks down on the hardworking blue-collar Wayne and that feeling is exasperated when Wayne falls in love with his daughter (Laraine Day).  Both men are stubborn to the core and butt heads at every turn.  Things come to a boil when Wayne suggests they stop tunneling in favor of a building a bridge.

If this is starting to sound like Public Works:  The Movie, that probably because that’s exactly what it feels like.

Tycoon was an expensive flop for RKO Pictures and you can see why.  It’s a slow moving and overlong melodrama that features more scenes of people building shit than you’d ever want to see.  It’s hard to tell where all the money went since the model work on the train is so damned phony looking.

Wayne does what he can with the subpar and maudlin material.  Even someone of his stature and charisma can’t breathe any life into the movie as the script never really gives him anything to do besides dig tunnels and bat eyelashes at his leading lady.  Admittedly, there are intermittent sparks between Wayne and Day.  Their scenes are marginally more appealing than the boring drama with Hardwicke and the dull tunneling sequences.  Hardwicke isn’t bad as the stuffy millionaire and Anthony Quinn has some nice moments as his right-hand man, but both men are hamstrung by the weak script.