Touches You

hyped garbage

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Suave submarine skipper Cary Grant (as Cassidy) leads a Christian crew from San Francisco to Tokyo Bay, to fight the Godless Japanese. A flag-waver, "Destination Tokyo" sailed into theaters while World War II was being fought. Debuting director Delmer Daves and his cast manage to deliver some engaging performances, despite a stereotyped script, and some occasionally toyish production values. Star Grant is enjoyable, albeit not entirely successful, in an atypical war hero role.Soldiering John Garfield (as Wolf) and Dane Clark (as Tin Can) head up a likable crew. Veteran fellow traveler Alan Hale (as Cookie) goes through the motions, which is enough. Mr. Clark and John Forsythe (as Sparks) make good early career impressions. John Ridgely (as Raymond), Warner Anderson (as Andy), and Tom Tully (as Mike) are also featured. The uncredited cast is noteworthy, including Whit Bissell (as Yo Yo) and Carlyle Blackwell Jr.; the latter's father, Carlyle Blackwell (Sr.), was one of Hollywood's first genuine "superstar" actors.The most amusing "dramatic" interplay culminates with inexperienced William Prince (as Pills) deciding to operate on impossibly doe-eyed Robert Hutton (as Tommy)'s ruptured appendix. Ouch!***** Destination Tokyo (12/31/43) Delmer Daves ~ Cary Grant, John Garfield, Dane Clark

Have not seen this film in years and it was a great experience seeing this film and the great veteran actors who made this into a great WWII story. Cary Grant, (Capt. Cassidy) plays the commander who manages to take his submarine right into the backyard of the Japanese Nation. John Garfield, (Wolf) plays a great role who charms the crew with his tales of all the women he met along with a great deal of exaggeration. Alan Hale, (Cookie Wainwright) was a cook on the submarine and was able to give a great deal of comedy to his role as the chef. This film will keep you on the edge of your seat when the sub comes under fire from the Japanese Destroyer's while one of the crew is having surgery by a man who knows nothing about appendicitis. Dane Clark, (Tin Can) gave a great supporting role in this film and this film started a great career for Dane in Hollywood. Great film, don't miss it, you can see this film over and over.

The problem with films like Destination Tokyo, when seen two-thirds of a century after they were made, is how unrealistic they seem to a modern audience. Not necessarily the technical details, but the development of character, how the characters interact, the hammer blows with which the patriotic messages are driven home to an audience so less cynical and more trusting than today's, and the cringe-worthy sentimentality.Of course, whether this is a patriotic flag-waver or government-sponsored propaganda all depends on your perspective: yesterday's freedom fighters are today's terrorists, remember, killing our troops with the weapons we bought for them. No doubt the Japs were taught that all round-eyes were the spawn of the devil, intent on destroying their precious way of life in the same way that submarine officer Grant sincerely informs his men (and the US population) that all Japs thrust rifles into their children's hands almost as soon as they can walk. Today that's propaganda, inaccurate and misleading, but it served a purpose that was worthy and it was a lot more transparent than the misinformation our governments feed us today.Anyway, stepping away from the soapbox for a moment, I have to say that I didn't really enjoy this one. At 135 minutes it was overlong and filled with too many characters who were stereotypical even then. Only one of these characters dies, early on, stabbed in the back by a treacherous Jap whose life he is trying to save. Grant is too affable an actor to convince as a disciplined leader of men, and keeps thinking about his son's first haircut and coming over all misty-eyed. He also peers through his periscope with both eyes open. John Garfield plays an in-your-face ladies man, so aggressive in his assertion of his prowess you can't help wondering what personal problems lay beneath the surface to warrant all this braggadocio. Garfield has a doll on board which he is very fond of. Dane Clark, an actor very similar in stature and style to Garfield, is the hard-bitten atheist who finds spiritual enlightenment in the midst of Japanese depth charges. Clark is pretty good; I always liked him as an actor, and he never seemed to enjoy the success he perhaps deserved. Garfield smacks him often in the chest. There are other characters: a comedy cook, a lanky young greenhorn, etc. They get on famously, the way all men do in confined spaces.Technically the film stands up. The details on board were as accurate as the US navy could allow without giving away things they didn't want the enemy to know, and the story is filled with interesting little details.

By the time of its release of Warner Brothers DESTINATION TOKYO (1943), it was coming across crystal clear; The Allies were in for a long, drawn out war. False notion of a an early end to War, simply because the United States was now involved were certainly cast into the figurative "circular file" of life.The underlying circumstances, although basically the same is in the First World War, were complicated by both the political and geographical situations of World War II. The combatants in the First Conflict were made up of nations that were ruled by a group of cousins, better known as the Royal Families of Europe. The Theatre of War were limited to The Western Front in Europe (France, 1914-1918), the Italian & Austro-Hungarian Front (1914-18) and the Middle East Consisting of the fighting against the Ottoman Turkish Empire by the British and the Arab Militias in Arabia and Palestine (the Holy Land, Israel). By contrast, World War II had military engagement of a truly Global Magnitude. Hence we had major Fronts in Europe (Both Eastern and Western), North Africa, the whole Atlantic via combat from the U Boats, Iran, the China-Burma-India Theatre of War, Southeast Asia in Viet-Nam and Burma, Indonesia and the Australian-New Zealand Theatre, The Island Warfare in Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian Island Groups; as well as the whole Pacific.With such an overwhelmingly immense a job to be done (literally do or die, no ifs ands or butts about it), the full and whole hearted support was needed from the entire Nation; and it's obvious that everyone did. From the Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airmen and Coast Guardsmen on the fronts to the industrial sector with its hard working corps of men and women; all pitched in and in going the extra mile, won the war.Hollywood sure did its part, as no one can deny. And with that, we are brought down to our subject at hand today.OUR STORY………In DESTINATION TOKYO we have a feature film which is at once a fine example of top Movie Entertainment, a concise statement of U.S. Policy, a stirring statement of the underlying, unique reasons of our being involved in European and Asian conflicts and an inspirational fictional version of events that have transpired previously. In short, it was at least in part, a propaganda piece par excellence.The ship has a super secret mission, which proves difficult to the veteran submarine crew. Being experienced fighting men, they fail to understand. Passing up the opportunity to sink some of the enemy Japanese shipping is an unthinkable deed to the crew, both officers and enlisted men. The thought surely though silently, must pass through their collective minds; could this Captain Cassidy (Cary Grant) be afraid of combat? Is he filled with cowardice or could it be those unknown orders that are behind his reserved behaviour.Finally the big moment comes and the cat gets let out of the bag. The crew finds out the news that they are on a special mission of reconnaissance; rather than combat. They were to get in close to the Japanese coastline, within Tokyo's port city of Yokohama harbor itself. From there, a landing party of two would go in to the beach property in order to check local topography of the land, weather conditions, tides, local conditions of all types.This seemingly insignificant mission, it turns out, is a necessary step in carrying out the later air raids over the Japanese home islands. This is the very same raid that we have come to know as "the Doolittle Raid." Once the mission has been completed with and the landing party has successfully returned to the sub, they begin their tedious, nerve wracking business of sneaking back out of the chain-link fence protected Tokyo harbor, the Captain proclaims; "The Job's done! Nothing says we can't fight now!" (Or some such) They did and must have sunk half of the Imperial Fleet, in a sort of reverse Pearl Harbor. We can just see the moviegoers rising to their feet and cheering at this scene.The ship returns safely to San Francisco, from which it had come. Cary's wife (Miss Faye Emerson) and family stand waiting on the pier! THE END.The journey across the wide Pacific gave the crew to interact and tell us all about themselves. As was the usual practice, Warner Brothers made sure that the crew was a mixture, sort of like a pound assortment of chocolates. Hence, we have guys from all over: New York, the South, Texas, the Dakotas and California. The excellent work of cast members like John Garfield, Alan Hale, Dane Clark, John Forsythe and Bill Kennedy sparkled.WE must concentrate on Tom Tully's work as the career man Petty Officer, Joe. Through his dialogues with others, as contrasted with the way he eventually pays the ultimate price, makes for an excellent back-drop for expressing what was the difference between our way of life in the U.S.A. and the life of those brought up under a Militarist Totalitarian System. At times, the speeches delivered by the Captain and others may seem to be have been a little much in the post World War II era.But once that one considers the events of 9/11, well………………..