Destination Tokyo (1943)

Delmer Daves' DESTINATION TOKYO is an overlong, fairly typical WWII propaganda film with heavy doses of anti-Japanese sentiment. Granted, it was filmed it was filmed at the height of WWII but be prepared for the worst. The film is over long. The first 30 minutes or so feel like padding, filled with exposition that introduces us to the characters with flashbacks to their other lives on the shore. Debonair Cary Grant is miscast as the stoic submarine captain in a part that cries out for a John Wayne. When a sweaty Grant has his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his shirt open to his navel, you'll be longing for the days he was mixing martinis for Irene Dunne in a penthouse. The film's highpoint is a genuinely suspenseful and tense journey by the submarine into Tokyo underneath a Japanese ship and navigates itself through a mine filled sea. The film is populated with familiar faces but only John Garfield (wasted) and Dane Clark make much of an impression. Too much time is spent on Robert Hutton who has zero screen presence and registers very little acting ability. With John Forsythe, Faye Emerson, Alan Hale, Tom Tully, William Prince and Warner Anderson.