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Warner Bros., 135 minutes
Among the worst of faults in Delmer Daves' Destination Tokyo ('43) - and there are plenty - is the fact that it manages to bait its star, Cary Grant, into giving one of his most impersonal and blandish performances. On the whole, it's a flimsily made, overlong and laggard piece of WWII fiction.
The film traces a U.S. submarine, the Copperfin, through a covert operation into Tokyo Bay, gathering Intel for the eventual "Doolittle Raid" in 1942. Captain Cassidy (Cary Grant) is an experienced, calm-under-pressure pro and his crew is accommodating and affable, which makes for an efficient submarine, but a rather stodgy watch.
In Destination Tokyo, drama is something to be manufactured - an emergency appendicitis operation stinks up the final act - rather than adeptly applied in screw-tight fashion. Meanwhile, Grant's Captain Cassidy is frankly a bore, an officer who worries about his wife and kids (as seen through flashbacks) but otherwise seems to have nothing of intrigue going on inside.
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As a fictional companion piece to the excellent Thirty Seconds to Tokyo (essentially the Doolittle Raid from the Navy's point-of-view), Destination Tokyo will limp and stagger around hopelessly. In direct comparison or on its own, this is one meatless, tame and shoddy WWII film. [C]
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