Shadows Over Shanghai

This is a preview of the second world war, made the year before it started. The characters even point it out, that this is what you have to expect of the coming war, and it sure is coming. The war scenes, although having nothing to do with the intrigue, are devastating in their impact. James Dunn and Ralph Morgan make a perfect complimentary pair: Dunn as hilarious as any comic, and Morgan unfathomable in his sinister objectivity: you can't guess what he really is up to and what he knows and on which side he is on. To this comes Linda Grey as the perfect innocent damsel in distress who has to be helped at any cost, which both the protagonists are more than eager to do, and at least she gets off well, leaving her dying brother behind in a troublesome fate that never gets explained. The villain is typical of the 30s: he is all evil and can't be anything else. James Dunn's humour and good spirits saves the film, which is good entertainment indeed, and the Americans should have known something of what to expect of the Japanese three years before Pearl Harbour, which they of course didn't.