Filmed in 1944 this movie has all the hallmarks of a jingoistic propaganda movie for the home front that was getting weary of the war. The racism and stereotyping is hardly subtle. A crew of a downed plane from the Doolitlle raid (the first attack on Japanese soil by the Yanks, all done to show the Japanese they were vulnerable) is put on trial for war crimes. They are tortured to reveal from where their raid originated. The Japanese Army wanted to humiliate the navy for allowing the raid (which came off American air craft carriers) and the men are pawns in the in fighting.
The airmen are individually tortured off screen, and returned to their cells, all showing damage from the ordeal. Who will break? As this is a propaganda vehicle I'll leave you to guess if any of them do. In the end Dana Andrews gets to make a "we're coming to get you, you bastards" speech on the witness stand and the men are marched off to their doom.
The acting is fine if overwrought. The script is clogged with "home sweet home" memories. Poems are recited, and battle hymns sung, and it's all too cloyingly ludicrous in 2007, or post 1970 for that matter. But I'm sure it left no dry eye in the audience, and it must have swelled the recruiting stations.
Interesting is the fact that the crew is accused of bombing civilian targets. As if! No red blooded American would do that! Well we did. Not in this raid, but later in 1944-45. In addition to the 2 nukes we dropped we systematically, deliberately bombed major cities, causing fire storms and killing off 3/4 of a million Japanese civilians. As McNamara famously quotes General Le May, in "The fog of war": "if we lose we'll be tried as war criminals." We won, and the Americans marched on to the moral high ground!
The airmen are individually tortured off screen, and returned to their cells, all showing damage from the ordeal. Who will break? As this is a propaganda vehicle I'll leave you to guess if any of them do. In the end Dana Andrews gets to make a "we're coming to get you, you bastards" speech on the witness stand and the men are marched off to their doom.
The acting is fine if overwrought. The script is clogged with "home sweet home" memories. Poems are recited, and battle hymns sung, and it's all too cloyingly ludicrous in 2007, or post 1970 for that matter. But I'm sure it left no dry eye in the audience, and it must have swelled the recruiting stations.
Interesting is the fact that the crew is accused of bombing civilian targets. As if! No red blooded American would do that! Well we did. Not in this raid, but later in 1944-45. In addition to the 2 nukes we dropped we systematically, deliberately bombed major cities, causing fire storms and killing off 3/4 of a million Japanese civilians. As McNamara famously quotes General Le May, in "The fog of war": "if we lose we'll be tried as war criminals." We won, and the Americans marched on to the moral high ground!