Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
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DVD details
Actor: Robert Mitchum, Spencer Tracy, Van JohnsonBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 138 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-06-05
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
DVD Review: 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
Great Classic WWII movie, True story.
Good service. DVD arrived on time and in good condition.
DVD Review: A Very Long Thirty Seconds
Summary: 5 Stars
When THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO was released in 1944, the war was a long way from being over. Hollywood knew that the Average Joe was basically still a decent sort, despite the understandable need for a revenge of Pearl Harbor. Director Mervyn LeRoy had to walk a fine line between an over the top jingoistic paen of American pride and one that dealt with a reasonably accurate and entertaining account of the famed Doolittle raid. LeRoy managed to achieve this delicate balance. First, he divides TSOT into three parts. Part one is presented in a semi-documentary style that favors fact over character. General Doolittle (Spencer Tracy) organizes an attack force of bombers to launch a devastating retaliation against Tokyo. Van Johnson in the film's protagonist. He is seen as the Average Joe, one who feels both fear and pressure yet can subsume both in time of peril. America's other Average Joes could look at him and relate almost on a molecular level. The training that he and the other pilots undergo is necessarily harsh. The unfit are weeded out. Again and again, they are reminded of the need for total secrecy. The wartime saying: "The slip of a lip can sink a ship" is still remembered by those of that generation. Phyllis Thaxter is Johnson's loving wife. The second part is the thirty seconds of the title. The actual bombing run, of course took more time, but the special effects of the time aided by some actual footage are both gritty and convincing. Johnson's ship meets minimal Japanese response, drops its bombs, and heads to China for safety. In Part three, TSOT combines the true story of the survivors with a believable human drama of the return of the crew. Johnson's plane is shot down and he and several of his comrades are badly wounded. Some local Chinese risk their own lives to protect and heal them. These Chinese civilians and doctors are presented as kind and noble. It is difficult not to get a lump in one's throat at several scenes. There are numerous closeups of Chinese, most of whom say not a word, but their resolute faces tell of a world of hurt that is magnified by their Stoic silence.
THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO is an unabashed film designed to instil patriotism even as it tells an entertaining tale in a manner that Hollywood has long since forgotten how to tell.
DVD Review: a favorite
Summary: 5 Stars
May be my Favorite Van Johnson movie of all time. The tru story of Ted Lawson, on e of the pilots on the raid over Tokyo in the B-25 Bombers that took off from an aircraft carrier during the early days of WW11DVD Review: The Crew of the Ruptured Duck
Summary: 5 Stars
Ted Lawson (Van Johnson) is a flyer. He is an ordinary man who excells at his job; he has a wife who is expecting a baby. But it is war, so his circumstances are more intense than they might be in a different time. He is asked to consider a highly secretive project under the command of Lieutenant Doolittle (Spencer Tracy). He accepts and eagerly trains for a mysterious final command.
The project is the now-famous Doolittle raid that bombed Japan following the Pearl Harbor attack. It has been shown in many movies, but this one is all the more poinent because it was filmed during the war. Consequently, the sentiments are still strongly in favor of the Americans, but there is a certain charm about that. This movie is a time capsule of an era as much as it is an entertainment piece.
If you're a fan of classic Hollywood, you will not be disappointed by the performances in this movie. Johnson is a standout leading man. He can play romantic scenes well and he is a great leader in the wartime scenes. He was the everyman, someone that each audience member could relate to. He plays alongside Tracy whose few scenes are memorable and Robert Walker and Robert Mitchum among others.
Funnily enough, there are no scene selections on this DVD. You can still skip forward, but there is no place in the menu to scroll through scenes. There are some cool extra features though, like a vintage documentary short about the renovation of the Normandy.
DVD Review: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
Summary: 3 Stars
Good old movie, good old stars. Movie is based on facts. I enjoyed it. Probably what the country needed at the time but characters are to black and white and not well developed.
Description of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
First B-25's in training for bombing mission over Japan, under General Jimmy Doolittle's command.There is no more ringing title among World War II movies than Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, and the mission it celebrates was unquestionably historic: a 400-mile bombing raid to carry the war to Japan itself mere months after that nation's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet the film is less memorable than many WWII pictures with less exalted factual basis. At the time, critic James Agee eloquently defined both its virtues and limitations as "a big-studio, big-scale film, free of artistic pretension ... transformed by its not very imaginative but very dogged sincerity into something forceful, simple, and thoroughly sympathetic in spite of all its big-studio, big-scale habits." That remains true today, but perhaps the movie--and its unimpeachably noble, admirably life-sized characters--wouldn't seem so stuck in the amber of a bygone era if Mervyn LeRoy and company had pumped a little "artistic pretension" into it.
Spencer Tracy--as James H. Doolittle, architect of the raid--rates the most towering screen credit, and he's superb. But his role's an extended cameo; the emotional core of the film is B-25 pilot Ted Lawson (Van Johnson) and his wife, Ellen (the glowing Phyllis Thaxter). Lawson's bestselling memoir (with Bob Considine) of his training for the secret mission, his group's launching from the aircraft carrier Hornet, and his crash landing and protracted ordeal in China--where he lost a leg--has been faithfully served. The film is long on homely detail and all-American decency (including a remarkably outspoken regret over the unavoidability of civilian casualties) but achieves its greatest impact in the raid itself. That sequence, in addition to boasting Oscar-winning special effects, is mostly shot in riveting silence. --Richard T. Jameson
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