An American political thriller; A story about two federal agents who are assigned the task of breaking up a ring of Communist Party troublemakers in Hawaii. This film has a propaganda tone, dealing with subject matter such as House Un-American Activities Committee investigations (the HUAC was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organisations suspected of having Communist ties), a major news item in late 1940s America. The script portrayed communists as inadequate, pseudo-intellectuals, error-prone gangsters, and agents of the Kremlin, and it declared that incidents in the film were based on the files of the HUAC Committee, without questioning the power that was used to jail people for contempt of court or its damaging effects on the careers of many artists it summoned. This melodramatic movie uses comic relief as well as mystery and a love story set against a travelogue of locations in Hawaii. Its subject matter was timely but crude, failing to be even-handed in its telling of a fictionalised spy story. Its depictions of anti-communists blurred the line of intent between serious documentary-drama and arousing and entertainment fact-based fiction. John Wayne gave his character potency, but his snarling attitude seemed misplaced, and some of the other characters introduced muddled the story. The story was about the American government rooting out communist influence in the United States post-war, but it was an inaccurate portrayal of that time and was playing to the hysteria of the time in attempting to educate the public.
