A disaster movie long before they became popular in the seventies and thus a movie ahead of its time for that matter.The characters are not too much cardboard ,and thanks to John Wayne and to sir Cedric Hardwicke ,when the movie ends ,you do not know exactly who the "villain" was .Laraine Day is beautiful ,she resembles Linda Darnell and she is cast as the tycoon's daughter who falls in love with ... (well,I won't write a spoiler!).The movie is quite enjoyable and even features very good scenes : Wayne and Day,attending the office,and admiring each other ,under the girl's governess watchful incensed eye (Judith Anderson:who else?);in a more tragical mood,the death of the thirty-year-old man afraid of graveyards since he was a child and who wants to be buried in the tunnel is really moving.Aventures and melodrama.

So I'm thinking to myself as the story approaches it's dramatic conclusion - here's John Wayne engineering a locomotive to the middle of a hundred yard high trestle, presumably to provide more stability in the face of a raging flood heading it's way. Do I have that right? Turns out it was a bad decision, with the whole train toppling over in the storm, and the bridge's center span lost as well. So does Johnny Munroe (Wayne) get fired and run out of town? Instead, he makes up with the boss (Cedric Hardwicke), his band of construction jocks become the new board of directors, and Munroe goes on his honeymoon with the boss's daughter (Laraine Day). This just doesn't make sense on so many levels.One can also question some of the events leading up to the finale as well. There was the initial decision to go through the mountain with a railroad instead of a bridge. Johnny Munroe was proved right on that score, but at what cost? It seems to me that Frederic Alexander wasted more money following bad advice from his board than by listening to the crew doing the job. Anthony Quinn had a rather dubious role in all of this as basically Alexander's yes man with little regard for his own instincts in fulfilling the project.Another thing that struck me was that as Wayne got older, the romantic lead in his films remained a girl in her twenties. As another example, you have Gail Russell opposite Wayne in 1947's "Angel and the Badman". Here, Laraine Day's character is mentioned as being twenty years old. She's quite attractive in her role, with wardrobe changes that would get her pegged as a fashionista today. With that in mind, this is one of the few pictures you'll see in which John Wayne sports a suit, and a white one at that! He did it some years earlier in 1931's "His Private Secretary", perhaps the only two times in his movie career that he might have done so.So even though this film is panned pretty much across the board, there are some worthwhile things to find if you tune in and pay attention. It's just that most of them don't have anything to do with the story itself. Loyal John Wayne fans at least should take a look, just as little Chico (Fernando Alvarado) stayed true to the big lug through thick and thin.

Tunnel blaster boss John Wayne defies the big money man Cedric Hardwicke by falling in love with his daughter, Laraine Day. Hardwicke is vindictive and pulls out his financing which creates all sorts of problems in getting a much needed train tunnel through the mountains. Colorful photography but slow pacing makes this film less than great, but in the hands of professionals, it's a notch above what it could have been. Judith Anderson is memorable in a rare sympathetic role as Hardwicke's secretary who helps Wayne and Day in spite of her own love for Hardwicke who takes her for granted. Anthony Quinn plays the man Hardwicke would rather see his daughter with; James Gleason is amusing as always as Wayne's pal, and young Fernando Alvarado is fine as the young boy who hangs around Wayne and Gleason. Under the direction of Richard Wallace (a name forgotten today, but with a list of impressive, if not spectacular credits), "Tycoon" has some long dull patches, but all of a sudden, the action explodes into excitement. This seems to be a variation of the type of film Cecil B. DeMille was making a few years before (with many people in the cast he would work with), and perhaps it needed someone of DeMille's stature to make it more than average.

John plays an engineer helping to build a bridge over a dangerous South American gorge, and Laraine Day plays the daughter of the wealthy man trying to get the bridge built. This is a tough film to wade your way through; it's over 2 hours long, and not especially exciting. Cedric Hardwicke and Judith Anderson are good, but they can't help this piece much.