“...Rope of Sand is a striking example of how resourceful direction and brisk acting can turn an ordinary story of revenge and lust for riches into a sizzling action picture. William Dieterle, the director, has injected an extra full measure of excitement and tension into the Walter Doniger screenplay by skillfully using the camera to create a suspenseful atmosphere of foreboding and by keeping the players snapping and snarling at each other like savage beasts.
“Mr. Dieterle's steady, driving directorial pace seldom lags over the long course of this highly romanticized adventure tale, which grows progressively volatile for more than ninety minutes. A torrid stretch of South African desert, where fabulous diamond fields lie just beneath the sand, provides a suitably colorful and remote setting for Rope of Sand.
“The conflict in this turbulent and fanciful melodrama revolves around two strong bodied - and equally weak minded - gents. Burt Lancaster, truculent as ever, plays a former hunting guide who comes back to the broiling town of Diamondstad to scoop up some glittering wealth and to even an old score with the sadistic police chief, Paul Henreid, who had brutalized him. It is no secret to reveal that they ultimately tangle in mortal combat. Mr. Dieterle and the author keep pointing to that conflict all along, but the director has made great capital, thanks to a fascinating portrayal of silky villainy by Claude Rains, out of simply delaying the showdown.
“As the fiendishly cunning director of the mining company, Mr. Rains is artfully sinister in fanning the hatred between Mike Davis and Commandant Paul Vogel. Like a master puppeteer, he twists them this way and that, but always contrives to separate them short of killing each other until such a development best serves his own selfish purpose. There is pitiless savagery, too, in the way he humiliates Vogel by black-balling his name every time it comes up for a club membership in Capetown. And it is with Machiavellian delight that he tosses a sultry looking trollop, posing as a respectable rich girl, between the two adversaries to further fan their vicious hatreds.
“The people you will meet in Rope Of Sand are not a pleasant bunch, but they are all products of good acting and therefore are strangely interesting....”