The Sand Pebbles
This is the heroic story of the men on the U.S.S. San Pablo who disturbed the sleeping dragon of savage China as the threatened world watched in breathless terror.
Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat USS San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China.His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the 'rice-bowl' system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river.
- Director
- Robert Wise
- Signature
- Drama · Craft · Action
- Worldwide
- $20M
Who's in it
Cast
The billed ensemble, with character names. Open any performer for their Nutevio filmography.
The Nutevio profile
Movie DNA
How The Sand Pebbles actually feels to watch, measured on the twelve traits our editors track across every Nutevio title.
Story overview
What It's About
Spoiler-free. Read the analysis below for the full argument.
Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat USS San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the 'rice-bowl' system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.
Where to watch
Streaming
Availability verified against regional listings.
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The numbers
Box Office & Release
The Sand Pebbles returned 1.7× its budget worldwide.
- Budget
- $12M
- Opening weekend
- —
- Domestic gross
- —
- International gross
- —
- Worldwide gross
- $20M
- Release date
- Dec 20, 1966
- Runtime
- 3h 16m
- MPAA rating
- —
- Language
- English, Mandarin
- Country
- Hong Kong, Taiwan
Figures from the verified production record. Fields we cannot source are left blank rather than estimated.
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