Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

🎙️ EPISODE 596: 11.11.22 For Veteran's Day 2022, I wanted to watch a war movie. So I googled "best war movies" and tried to find something slightly off the beaten path. And that's how we've arrived here: the 1944 classic, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, which — yes — I only chose because of the great Pere Ubu song of same name, but I actually really enjoyed it, much more than I thought I would. It isn't the full-on, unapologetic piece of war propaganda I expected from a movie made about the Unites States' initial military response to Pearl Harbor, especially given the fact that it was conceived of and produced less tan two years after those events. It's certainly still a pierce of propaganda but it's nuanced, especially in its treatment of the Chinese allies who help our heroes survive after the mission. There's more gratitude than there is stereotyping which is not something I expected.

But where this film shines is in its aerial shots and production and early split-screen projection FX. There are long, wordless passages of the bomber planes flying low over the water towards their targets. There's some extraordinary miniature work when it comes to filming the actual bombings. It really holds up. The famed Dalton Trumbo wrote the script and to that end it's packed tightly with all the elements one would expect: hokey soldier banter, serious war talk, and an extensive and very sappy romance. The first third is a bit of a slog but it really gets entertaining when the mission begins and it finishes strong. Definite recommend from me!

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 595 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 597 ⫸

---

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is a 1944 American war film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo is based on the 1943 book of the same name by Captain Ted W. Lawson. Lawson was a pilot on the historic Doolittle Raid, America's first retaliatory air strike against Japan, four months after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid was planned, led by, and named after United States Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, who was promoted two ranks, to Brigadier General, the day after the raid. It was released on November 15, 1944.