50 Great War Films: Tora! Tora! Tora!

 

Directed by Richard Fleischer - 1970 poster

I am going to start with our friend Roger Ebert, who felt that the movie was one of the deadliest, dullest blockbusters ever made and that it suffered from not having some characters to identify with.  He was equally scathing about The Battle of Britain. Well, I disagree and why should we have to identify with any of the characters? We weren't there - do we identify with actors/characters like John Wayne or Steve McQueen, anyway? Stupid criticism. Why can't we enjoy relatively factual historical events without having to feel part of them. I bet it was really because the film looked at the event from the Japanese point of view as well as the American and it showed Americans making mistakes. What I would agree with (as other critics highlighted) was that some of the 'action' scenes were clearly involving model ships and planes, and the same ship sinking/aircraft blowing up was seen from different angles later on. Yes, the plotline may have been slow, but it was trying to recreate the episodes leading up to that Sunday morning of 7th December 1949. And, yes, the need for all those captions - for personnel and places - felt excessive (and I still couldn't make out who-was-who half the time), but there were a lot of individuals involved. So, bah to Mr. Ebert.

American ships being destroyed

American planes being destroyed

The story is well known; the Americans were caught with 'their pants down' by the perfidious Japanese. However, the producer, Daryl F. Zanuck is on record as saying he wanted to correct the impression that American failure was wholly to blame as the film would show the brilliance of the Japanese operation as well. Not surprisingly, the movie was received more enthusiastically in Japan than the USA. Some critics blamed poor acting, but I thought Martin Balsam (Admiral Kimmel), E.G. Marshall (Lt. Col. Bratton), Jason Robards (General Water Short), George Macready (Secretary of State Cordell Hull), So Yamamura (Admiral Yamamoto), Takahiro Tamura (Lt. Commander Fuchida ) and Eijiro Tono (Admiral Nagumo) were more than adequate. The film was all the better for not having so-called 'A' listers preening themselves.

 

The Japanese on the High Seas 

 

The use of old-fashioned telephones - even now outdated telegrams - papers being shoved into brief cases etc - that simplistic world before the Internet and smartphone!

The film had its world premiere on 23 September 1970 in New York, Tokyo, Honolulu and Los Angeles. It was the ninth highest grossing film of 1970 and was a major hit in Japan.

2001 DVD