Across the Pacific

Good WW2 spy movie with the three leads and director from The Maltese Falcon. The plot is about Humphrey Bogart getting tangled up with baddie Sydney Greenstreet and love interest Mary Astor. Greenstreet's a Japanese sympathizer and is trying to recruit Bogie. Good luck with that, Gutman. Bogart is excellent playing a character he was totally at home playing: wisecracking tough guy ladies' man. Greenstreet is villainous as ever and perfect at it. Just as in Maltese Falcon, Mary Astor is playing a stunning beauty that makes heads turn. Just like in Maltese Falcon, she doesn't match the character description. Perhaps Huston had a bit of a crush. Otherwise I don't get her being cast in these types of parts at a time when the likes of Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner were around. Still, despite that element of the casting being off, Astor does fine.

This movie has an interesting backstory. It was originally to be about a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor but when that actually happened in real life, they changed it to Panama. They never changed the title, though, despite the movie taking place nowhere near the Pacific. Then John Huston got called to serve before filming was complete so Vincent Sherman had to step in. Oddly, it seems Huston was the only one who knew how the movie was supposed to end so Sherman had to make up the final fifteen minutes or so of the movie!

There are films that are so connected to their times, when taken out of context there's no rhyme, no reason for portrayals, but factor in the great betrayals, lets you accept the extremes, of paradigms. As Rick Leland is disgraced and then ejected, from a role that he would like to have perfected, leaves him in a tricky place, after losing all his face, and he's become quite disengaged and disaffected. On a boat he gets to meet curious souls, who have ambitions to dispose and take controls, as the layers are peeled back, looks like there might be an attack, by the folks who like to eat food out of bowls.

Of its time.

WWII intrigue is served up in the days leading up to the bombing on Pearl Harbor. However, in an apparent late decision by the writers to not mention Pearl Harbor, the bombing target becomes Panama so history can be ignored. Bogart is cool as always as an artillery officer. He is reunited with his co-stars, Astor and Greenstreet, both in fine form, and director Huston from "The Maltese Falcon." Unfortunately, the script is rather convoluted and rambling, seemingly written in a rush to cash in on the success of the earlier film. The dialog is crisp and witty. If only the plot had been better, this could have been a classic.

"Across the Pacific" is a fairly well done spy movie that takes place in the last days before America's entry into World War II. Rick Leland (Humphrey Bogart) is cashiered from the U.S. Army for stealing funds. The events that follow involve a love interest (Mary Astor) and an enemy agent (Sydney Greenstreet) and a trip on a passenger ship from New York to the Panama Canal. Humphrey Bogart as an American spy is convincing in a role that might have been played by Sean Connery 20 years later.

The subplot of a Japanese plot to torpedo the Panama Canal and put it out of action was a case of truth being stranger than fiction with the recent revelation of Japanese submarines which carried planes designed to knock the canal out, but which were never used. "Across the Pacific" has humor, action and romance and is one of Bogart's lesser known but very good movies.

This serves as a nice companion piece to "The Maltese Falcon", but DON'T compare it the masterpiece or you won't enjoy it. Also, keep in mind, this was during the beginning of WWII (obviously), so expect your typical "all Japanese are evil" racial stereotypes. It is upsetting to see that films like these just heightened the US's paranoia, driving us to send everyone of Japanese descent to internment camps.

You're going to really enjoy this film if you've seen modern Pulp adventures like the Indiana Jones trilogy or Sky Captain (though don't expect to see ANY mystical/sci-fi elements involved). This has it all: a hard-boiled hero, exotic locales, constant plot twists and turns, colorful villains, and a mysterious woman.

Bogart, as (almost) always plays the same character he always plays. but boy, does he fit in SO well into this film. Mary Astor, while not the pretty face that she was built up to be here and in "The Maltese Falcon", gives another great performance, and unlike Bogart, she was always able to give characters in a similar vein (in this case, the mysterious woman), each their own personalities. Her Alberta Marlow is not at all like "schoolgirl" Brigid O'Shaughnessey, but (at least openly) tougher, a perfect match with Bogart during their exchanges of dialogue, while remaining to be extremely ambiguous, never making sure whether or not she's an ally or a femme fatale. When all is revealed, looking back on it things made perfect sense with her character's attitude.

Sydney Greenstreet adds another great villain to his own rogues gallery. Here he's a man obsessed with Japanese culture and way of life, so much that he has become apart of and accepted by "the enemy". Victor Sen Young, who played a great shark grinned scumbag in "The Letter", does good here, looking very happy that he at least was able to speak coherently for once in a motion picture.

Huston's direction is really worth looking at, especially visually stunning during a sequence at a movie theater. Without his obvious presence and Bogart, this film would have just been another propaganda story of espionage. Sadly, when he had to leave the film for war duty, the final scenes were shot by otherwise competent (but nothing special) director Vincent Sherman. The final 15 minutes seem extremely out of place with the rest of the film, and its a shame Huston wasn't around a little bit longer to round up what could have been a quintessential piece of a feature 40's pulp movie.

Worth seeing, its a film that falls short of greatness, but man is it entertaining.