Message from Dean - May 8th 2007
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List Price: $19.98Price: $6.95 You Save: $13.03 (65%)Prices subject to change.
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786301977289
Format: Black & White, NTSC
ISBN: 6301977289
Label: Mgm Entertainment
Languages: EnglishOriginal LanguageAnalog
Manufacturer: Mgm Entertainment
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Mgm Entertainment
Release Date: January 23, 1991
Running Time: 138 minutes
Studio: Mgm Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 1944-11
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
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
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
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 ... Read More
Rating:  -
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.
Rating:  -
a good movie about w.w.II. if you like warbirds or stories of w.w.II and the efforts of people to servive this is a movie. it also shows a personal side of the main pilot , his crew and the men around him.
Rating: -
It seems relevant and important to say something about my favorite World War II film -- "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" -- on Veteran's Day. While I did not serve in the military, my dad fought in WW2 in the Pacific at Tarawa, one of the Marines' most heralded battles in history. Dad told me 6,000 men were killed in the four-day shootout for Tarawa, a little island in the Pacific we wanted for an air strip. Five thousand of those deaths, he told me, were Japanese. We buried the Americans in grave and dug trenches for the enemy dead, he said.
None of this says anything about this great film, which relates a time much earlier in the war and reconstructs our first mainland attack on Japan. What makes this film great is its authenticity, being filmed while the war was taking place, and its importance as a gift to the shattered American psyche. Knowing war was imminent after the Nazis overwhlemed Europe beginning in 1939, Americans still did not want to enter the war. After Pearl Harbor ... Read More
Rating: -
You cannot get better than Spencer Tracy as James Doolittle who lead the raid against Japan when America was in desperate straights for a shot back at the Empire of Japan. Tracy is so much better than Alec Baldwin who plays Doolittle with a smarminess. The greater onscreen time though goes to Van Johnson who is a B-25 pilot actually going on the raid. Launching from the Hornet, the raid was a smashing psychological attack against Japan. Shamed by their incompetence, Japanese Generals and Admirals had to play a more defensive game with this unforseen boldness by American pilots. In this film, Van Johnson crash lands in China, loses a leg and makes it back home.
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