Sternberg's personality survives; what's missing is the soul that might have turned the artifice and self-parody into poetry.

What is so enjoyable, apart from Harry Wild's shimmering camerawork, is the tongue-in-cheek tone of the script and performances, best evidenced in the sparkling banter and innuendo between Mitchum and Russell.

All the other ingredients, including Miss Russell's famed physique, are pretty much the same as have been tumbled into previous cheesecakes with Jane and Bob.

A troubled production didn’t prevent 1951’s His Kind of Woman from emerging as an excellent movie — the same can’t be said of Macao, which, like the earlier picture, starred Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell and was overseen by Howard Hughes.