Ali sulla Cina

Aviation drama from Warner Brothers and director Ray Enright. Pilot Dave Logan (Pat O'Brien) starts a company with the intention of making transoceanic flight not only a reality, but a safe and reliable service. To this end he drives his engineers and test pilots to the brink, as well as pushing away his own wife Jean (Beverly Roberts). Also featuring Humphrey Bogart, Ross Alexander, Henry B. Walthall, Marie Wilson, Joseph Crehan, Joe King, Addison Richards, Anne Nagel, Milburn Stone, Frank Faylen, Pierre Watkin, and Wayne Morris.

This is a mediocre B-movie that will hold some interest for aviation buffs. The presentation of O'Brien's character is so off-putting as to make him unbearable, and you cheer when someone socks him in the jaw. Bogart shows some of his future promise as a cool-as-ice test pilot with an easy smile and no small amount of charm. Ross Alexander isn't bad either, playing a loyal friend to O'Brien. Alexander would come to a sad end, taking his own life less than six months after the release of this movie, at age 29. Silent screen legend Henry Walthall, playing an elder engineer affectionately called "Dad", would die of a heart attack in the middle of production, grimly mirroring a plot point in the film. Walthall was 58, but looked twenty years older. They lived rougher in those days.