Desperate Journey
“Now for Australia and a crack at those Japs!”
That’s Errol Flynn’s closing line, delivered with all the conviction of a man reading a grocery list. It tells you everything you need to know about Desperate Journey, a film that can’t decide if it’s a grim war drama or a breezy adventure romp, and botches both.
The setup works. RAF bomber crew, mostly American and Australian expats, gets shot down over Germany. They escape. They run. Raymond Massey’s Prussian officer pursues. Simple. But director Raoul Walsh can’t find a consistent tone to save his life.
One minute, crew members are dying bloody deaths. The next, Flynn and Ronald Reagan are yukking it up about steaks and nurses. This isn’t gallows humor—it’s tonal whiplash. When Alan Hale starts spitting seeds at Nazis like this is Hogan’s Heroes a generation early, you wonder if anyone read the same script.
Here’s the real shocker: Reagan wipes the floor with Flynn. The future president radiates that easy, cocky charm Flynn built his career on, while Flynn himself seems lost, reciting lines instead of living them. It’s like watching an understudy outshine the star at his own premiere.
The film stumbles technically too. The bomber crash uses miniature work so obvious you can practically see the strings. Later, they get it right—a car genuinely plunging off a bridge, a crackling chase sequence that’s the film’s only sustained triumph. The night photography impresses throughout. No cheating with day-for-night filters here.
Then there’s Nancy Coleman. Despite getting third-billing, she doesn’t show up until almost an hour in and then for maybe fifteen minutes of screen time. Audiences expecting romance got a bait-and-switch nobody needed.
At 107 minutes, Desperate Journey can’t sustain tension or justify its tonal lurches. It feels rushed, a quick cash-in on America’s war entry. All Through the Night, released the same year, nailed the action-comedy-wartime blend Walsh fumbles here. Howard Hawks would deliver a superior bomber picture with Air Force a year later, making this an easy skip.
Unless you’re a Reagan completist. Then it’s essential viewing—a reminder that before politics, the man had movie star chops capable of outshining Errol Flynn. Who’d have thought?