Lupercali Review of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

Spencer Tracy wasted

[4/10 · 14 August 2004]

I don't know why, but I seem to find myself in opposition to all the other reviewers on this one. I found it tedious, boring, predictable, melodramatic, badly acted and generally a waste of time. Spencer Tracy, for once, was completely uninteresting, as were the rest of the cast. The portrayal of the Chinese vs the Japanese was historically interesting I suppose, but that's about it. A more respectable (though fictional) wartime effort is Bogart's 'Across the Pacific', which manages to not utterly demonize the Japanese even though it was made less than a year after Pearl Harbor.

Basically it's a wartime flag-waving movie which has little to recommend it today. OF course I'm in a clear minority on this, so rent it and make up your own minds.