DESTINATION TOKYO (1943)

On Christmas Eve 1941, the crew of the submarine Copperfish learn from their captain (Cary Grant) that they'll be leaving San Francisco the next day on a secret mission in the Pacific. When Grant opens his sealed orders the next day, he discovers that they are to head up to the Aleutian Islands where they will pick up John Ridgely, a meteorologist, and deliver him right into Tokyo Bay. Ridgely's mission: to take weather readings in preparation for the upcoming Doolittle raid on Tokyo. The rest of the film covers their successful trip to Tokyo and their tense journey back home. We get to know several of the men: the bragging womanizer (John Garfield), the short feisty Greek (Dane Clark), the cook (Alan Hale), the pharmacist (William Prince), and the new kid (Robert Hutton). Along the way, the crew plays a tense game of hide-and-seek with Japanese ships, navigates carefully through a mine field, is attacked with depth charges, and engages with enemy planes. The new kid even has an attack of appendicitis and the pharmacist has to play amateur surgeon to save his life (something inspired by a real life incident, as was the sub's mission). At two hours and fifteen minutes, this is overlong, and it's the action scenes that feel the most padded out—something current superhero movies suffer from. But some real tension is built up in a few scenes, notably when the crew is trying to keep quiet while enemy ships float above them. As far as I know, this is Cary Grant's only war action movie and he does a nice job, as do all the actors. Other familiar faces in the supporting cast include Warner Anderson, Whit Bissell, Tom Tully, and John Forsythe. The stereotyping present in most WWII movies is kept to a minimum, and fewer men die than you might expect. The three on the left in the photo are Garfield, Hutton, and Clark. [DVD]