Across The Pacific (1942)

Set just days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a man (Humphrey Bogart) is court-martialed from the U.S. Coast Artillery for embezzling funds. In disgrace, he sets sail on a Japanese freighter that will pass through the Panama Canal. Once on board, he become involves in some intrigue involving a beautiful woman (Mary Astor), a pro-Japanese doctor (Sydney Greenstreet) and a Japanese-American (Victor Sen Yung). The film has many of the key personnel from THE MALTESE FALCON: in addition to the three leads, there's director John Huston, cinematographer Arthur Edeson and composer Adolph Deutsch. Needless to say, it's nowhere near as good. Bogart, Astor and Greenstreet essentially do a variation on their MALTESE characters. Repeating a line from FALCON, Bogart even says to Astor, "You're good!" when he suspects duplicity on her part. It's a serviceable propaganda piece that moves along amiably until it falls flat on its face at the end. Its problems are probably mainly due to the fact that the film faced a hasty rewrite (it was supposed to be about subverting an attack on Pearl Harbor then Pearl Harbor got bombed for real) and that Huston left the film before it was finished. With Lee Tung Foo, Frank Wilcox, Richard Loo, Keye Luke, Frank Faylen, Anthony Caruso and Philip Ahn.