Agguato ai tropici

This film contains many aspects of the noir, including the clipped bantering dialogue with the clever intent. Coming soon after The Maltese Falcon, Across the Pacific is something of a mystery movie too.

Rick Leland (Humphrey Bogart) is a disgraced military man with dubious loyalties. He gets on a Japanese ship that is sailing to New York City, the Canal Zone and the Orient. While onboard, he becomes familiar with the other passengers: a western businessman named Dr. Leland (Sydney Greenstreet) who has a penchant for all things oriental and a smalltown woman named Alberta (Mastor Astor) who is taking a pleasure cruise.

But we sense all is not as it seems. Will Rick sail off into the Japanese sunset, bitter at the country that snubbed him? Will the doctor reveal an insidious intent? Will Alberta prove to be more than a romantic foil for Rick?

The action takes place not long before the U.S. would be forced to enter the war. Tensions are high. Eventually there is gunplay and all motives are revealed. Along the way, ATP proves to be an interesting film. The ending reminded me of another film that would follow in 1959--North by Northwest. ATP is a high stakes game of cat and mouse that coexists with a lighthearted romance.

My one complaint is that Mary Astor is not an actress I think would inspire lust in Bogart's Rick. Someone like Rita Hayworth would better fit the bill.

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.

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.

This film is okay -- watchable and even interesting -- but one can't help comparing it to "The Maltese Falcon" which appeared the previous year. Same principle actors -- Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet -- no Peter Lorre fondling the handle of his cane, alas, and no gunsel -- and, for the most part, the same Director, John Huston. Huston was called up for Signal Corps duty halfway through filming and as a gag shot the scenes up to the point at which Bogart was strapped helplessly into a chair and surrounded by armed guards, a situation seemingly without the possibility of escape. Then Huston cheerfully said goodbye and walked off the set, leaving his replacement, Vincent Sherman, to try to figure out how to get Bogart free.

It may be unfair to compare "Across the Pacific" to a lucky shot like "The Maltese Falcon," but this film invites the comparison. Not just the same performers but similar lines -- "You're good, Angel, very, very good." But in Falcon the actors fit their fictional characters like enzymes accommodating themselves to a substrate. Here they are just actors playing familiar roles: the obese villain, the officer who's dishonorable discharge is faked so he can go undercover (Gary Cooper could have done as well, and in fact DID in a later movie), the innocent woman made to look bad because the enemy has imprisoned her dissolute father. The Japanese are all plain-vanilla bad guys, even the familiar young one who makes amusing wisecracks in American slang. And all the Japanese have real names like Tong, Chan, Loo, Fong, and Ahn. (To be fair, the last one is Korean, not Chinese.)

If the characters are not nearly as much fun to watch as in "The Maltese Falcon," the plot is no more than a simple war-time mystery involving secret information that the Japanese want to use to start the war by torpedoing the locks of the Panama Canal. Actually, the Japanese did develop such plans later in the war. They intended to deliver a handful of torpedo planes to the vicinity of the Canal in huge submarines, which were available. The planes were not, and the plans folded when the war ended.

In the movie, the characters move from New York to Canada, then board a Japanese steamer, back to New York, then to Panama, where they disembark. They travel from the Atlantic side of the canal to the Pacific -- but they never make it across the Pacific.

Richard Macaulay had to do some fast rewrites on this John Huston-directed picture, based upon a magazine serial by Robert Carson. When dishonorably discharged Army Officer Humphrey Bogart is revealed to be a spy staking out a powerful Japanese sympathizer aboard a vessel to the Orient, the portly commander was originally supposed to be supervising the bombing of Pearl Harbor. When that occurred in real-life while the picture was in production, Macaulay hurriedly switched the locale to the Panama Canal (making the film's title irrelevant). However, even if the story structure is patchy--and Mary Astor's role as a plantation owner's daughter ultimately doesn't make much sense--"Across the Pacific" has a dryly joshing quality about it, and the end results are pleasant if unremarkable. Bogart (playing 'Rick', sometimes 'Ricky') is in jovial spirits throughout, especially when comparing gun sizes with Sydney Greenstreet (never better) or fingering Astor's back after she's acquired a sunburn; his blithe, easy performance makes the film enjoyable. Astor (ostensibly the love-interest) doesn't pour on the charm in her scenes with Bogie; she plays it rather big-sisterly with him, a seen-it-all kind of gal, and this works extremely well. The finale is a sign of the times--American fighter planes fill the skies--but even this corny touch works a little magic, despite the film's misshapen quality and sluggish beginning. **1/2 from ****