Donovan's Reef Backdrop Blur
Donovan's Reef Poster
United States
6.3 1h 49m

Donovan's Reef

"Gangway...For This Year's BIG Adventure!"

After her great aunt's death, a high-society woman arrives on a Hawaiian island in search of the heir - the father she has never met.

Watch Now Watch Trailer

Top Cast

  • John Wayne

    John Wayne

    Michael "Guns" Donovan

  • Elizabeth Allen

    Elizabeth Allen

    Ameilia Dedham

  • Lee Marvin

    Lee Marvin

    Thomas "Boats" Gilhooley

  • Cesar Romero

    Cesar Romero

    Andre de Lage

  • Mike Mazurki

    Mike Mazurki

    Monk Menkowicz

  • Jack Warden

    Jack Warden

    William Dedham

  • Jacqueline Malouf

    Jacqueline Malouf

    Lelani Dedham

  • Cherylene Lee

    Cherylene Lee

    Sarah "Sally" Dedham

  • Jeffrey Byron

    Jeffrey Byron

    Luki Dedham

Overview

After her great aunt's death, a high-society woman arrives on a Hawaiian island in search of the heir - the father she has never met.

Rating

6.3 / 10
158 Reviews
2 Popular

1 Reviews

  • John Chard
    John Chard
    8 Dec 24, 2018

    Sunny, breezy and flipping delightful. You hear the names John Ford and John Wayne and one automatically thinks of Westerns, sprawling landscapes and machismo in bunches. Odd then that their last collaboration should be a knock about comedy set on a paradise isle. Perhaps even odder is that it should turn out to be one of their most entertaining films. Donovan's Reef finds the two Johns in very relaxed mood, as is the rest of the cast I might add. A cast that includes Lee Marvin, Mike Mazurki, Jack Warden, Cesar Romero, Dorothy Lamour and the lovely Elizabeth Allen. Speaking personally, I found the film far more rewarding by not knowing much about it before hand, I really only ventured into it out of loyalty to the Johns and the Marv. So in that, this isn't much of a review as such, because I would simply urge people to give it a go. Why you ask?, well because it's one of those films that can brighten your day when things have gone dark, you got The Duke and The Marv slugging each other at regular intervals, not in the normal way associated with these guys, but jocular-with this biff bang machismo comes laughs a plenty. We have Romero and his beard on prime slime mode, Allen as delicious as she is prim and proper and the Kaua'i location work gorgeously realised by William H. Clothier's photography. It's not just a comedy either. Under the mirth we find Ford dealing in thematics such as anti-racism, anti preconceptions and one of his pet leanings of brotherhood. Donovan's Reef is a smashing film, it's far from perfect, something the principals were aware of. But in the end it's obvious that all involved just said to hell with it, lets enjoy it and hope the audience buys into that attitude as well. One can only hope that you do buy into it, and thus get as much fun from it as yours truly most assuredly did. 8/10

Trailers & Clips

Donovan's Reef (1963) - Official Trailer

Recommendations

Six Days Seven Nights

In the South Pacific, in Polynesia, on the island of Makatea, Quinn Harris, a taciturn pilot, leads a quiet life, content to earn a living by transporting goods in his De Havilland Beaver. His life is exactly as he wants it to be—until he meets Robin Monroe, a sophisticated and determined woman, the assistant editor of a New York magazine, on vacation for a week with her boyfriend, Frank Martin. An urgent work assignment in Tahiti, the neighboring island, forces Robin to reluctantly hire Quinn to fly her there. But a violent storm forces them to make an emergency landing on a deserted island. This unlikely pair avoids each other at first, until they are forced to team up to escape the island... and evade the pirates who are after them. Danger and temptation are never far away...

Six Days Seven Nights

6.1 1998