Tora! Tora! Tora!

(Movie Review)

This is continuing my World War II movie theme after the "Patton" review. (In fact this movie came out the same year as "Patton").

This is one of those movies that's probably more talked about than watched. It's more well known for its ambition than its merit, but it is worth watching. It certainly kicks the pants off that Ben Affleck piece of crap that came out 5 years ago.

Most people are probably familiar with the premise behind this film, but I'll recap it anyway: this is a film about the attack on Pearl Harbor and the events leading up to it. It tells the story from both the Japanese side and the American side. This movie was a cooperative effort between Japan and America, with two separate production teams, one in Japan, and one in America.

This was supposed to be the American debut for Japanese film legend Akira Kurosawa. But he was eventually let go from the production. (The DVD commentary goes into this in more detail, but basically it boils down to he was too much of an obsessive perfectionist). And Kinji Fukasaku (of "Battle Royale" fame) took over.

Despite the fact that wikipedia was able to nitpick a few inaccuracies, this film is meticulously historically accurate. About every scene, and even much of the dialogue, comes straight out of reality. It's almost more of a docu-drama than a film, but for the history geeks like me, it's a real pleasure to watch.

There's lots of things going on, but basically the story is about the preparations to attack the Harbor from the Japanese side, and all the reasons we were caught off guard from the American side.

Of course since the viewer already knows the outcome, a lot of the suspense of this film is lost. (Which may help to explain why this film was a flop commercially).

Of course in hindsight it may seem like the attack was inevitable. Especially when you go through all the instances (as this film does) where the Americans should have realized something was coming, but didn't open their eyes.

I actually did an oral report for one of my Calvin classes on conspiracy theories surrounding the Pearl Harbor attack--the theory that the Roosevelt administration knew about the attack beforehand, but allowed them to take place in order to mobilize popular support for entering the war.

(I didn't actually believe in any of these theories, mind you. The report was just exploring the fact that the conspiracy theories existed. However since coming to Japan I've learned that over here those conspiracy theories pass as the commonly accepted version of history. It's a source of frequent debate between me and Shoko).

After I gave the report about all the warnings the US had blatantly ignored, the professor commented that sometimes something can be so outside of our field of imagination that all the warnings in the world won't convince us. The US government was convinced that a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor would have been impossible to carry out.

And both of these sides, the early warning signs, and the US governments certainty that an attack would not take place, are shown in this film.

(I'm sure some parallels could be made to the Bush administrations bungling of the events leading up to September 11th. And for that matter the conspiracy theories surrounding those events. Which, by the way, also seem to have penetrated mainstream Japanese media and is another source of my debates with Shoko. Personally I side with Noam Chomsky's opinion.)

The battle sequences in this film are absolutely amazing. Despite being over 30 years old and in the days before CGI, I think they can hold their own against any of today's Hollywood battle scenes.

Because of the complicated history behind this film (coordinating both American and Japanese film crews) the directors commentary on the DVD is almost more interesting than the film itself. There are lots of interesting stories: for instance the early film sent over from Japan featured so much over acting they had to send it back and ask the Japanese crew to re-do it. (Frequent readers of this blog know that I'm always criticizing Japanese cinema for over-acting. I'm glad to know it's not just me).

Tora! Tora! Tora! : Movie Review (Scripted)