Tora! Tora! Tora!

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Summary: "Confirmation? There's your confirmation!"
Review: I first saw Tora! Tora! Tora! (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! in Japanese) in 1974, when I was 20 years old on Atlanta's Channel Two. As strange as this may sound, I have always liked movies about World War II. My stepfather had served in the Navy during the war and in fact he had joined the service shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which is the subject of this 2 hour and 25 minute-long Japanese-American 1970 production.

This movie was directed by several directors including Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasuka, but the American version (yes, there is a Japanese version) gives the credit to veteran director Richard Fleischer. Based on Gordon W. Prange's "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and Ladislas Farago's "The Broken Seal", the film accurately depicts the events on both sides of the Pacific leading up to the stunning attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet on Sunday, December 7, 1941.
Even though it covers an 18-month period between Admiral Yamamoto's (Soh Yamamura) initial planning for Operation Hawaii and the attack itself, Tora! Tora! Tora! (the title refers to the code used to inform the Japanese that the Americans had been caught by surprise) never drags or seems dull. I learned, for instance, that Japanese Ambassador Nomura was a skilled and honorable diplomat who did not know what his country's military leaders were planning, and that he hoped to avoid war. I was also stunned by how General Walter C. Short (Jason Robards) was so preoccupied by the threat of sabotage from Hawaii's 125,000 Japanese inhabitants that he foolishly parked all the bombers and fighters in Hickam and Wheeler Fields in neat rows, supposedly to make them easier to guard but actually making them sitting ducks.
What amazed me about watching this movie is how clueless Pearl Harbor's defenders were on that Sunday morning. Though many people think the first shot of the Pacific War was fired by the Japanese, it was actually fired by the USS Ward on a Japanese midget submarine trying to sneak into the harbor. This happened roughly an hour before the first bomb fell on Battleship Row. I would have thought that the report of an unknown submarine being fired upon in a restricted area would have alerted the whole fleet. Wrong! American officers in Oahu were so certain that the Japanese would be spotted long before they could launch a strike that Captain James Earle (Richard Anderson) asks for confirmation before he tells his superiors. This does not make Adm. Husband E. Kimmel (Martin Balsam) very happy and I thought he was very angry that the Ward's initial report did not reach him in time.
The movie makes clear to the audience that history often hinges on small but significant details. Who would have thought that the fate of two great nations would be decided by a diplomat's slow typing speed, or that a report of a large radar blip off to the north of Oahu would be received with the phrase, "Well, don't worry about it."? It sounds like bad fiction but everything in this movie is based on historical fact.
Tora! Tora! Tora! has incredible battle scenes. Most of the aerial scenes were shot using either vintage planes or realistic replicas (because there are no flying Zero fighters, T-28 Texans were modified to look like the famous Japanese planes). The Navy actually allowed 20th Century-Fox to film in and around Pearl Harbor and rented a World War II era carrier that was to be decommissioned to serve as a stand in for the Japanese carrier. Clever editing, good miniature effects and carefully built live action sets give the illusion that one is actually reliving the Day of Infamy.
The 60th Anniversary Special Edition DVD was released around the same time as 2001's Pearl Harbor. It features an all new 20-minute documentary, director's commentary, the orginal theatrical trailer, and restores the movie to its original widescreen format. It has four audio tracks (English 4.1, the commentary, English Dolby Surround, French Mono), and subtitles in English and Spanish.

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Summary: Pearl Harbor the true story
Review: This movie is historians' dream of the description of pearl harbor. I Recomend you buy this. There is a ton of fun in it.

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Summary: Akira Kurosawa was once involved in this film production.
Review: The film has real Japanese actors directed by a Japanese moderate director. In this regard the Japanese scenes are much authentic than the recent "Pearl Harbor" with Japanese American actors. Akira Kurosawa started shooting his scenes with different actors in Japan but soon resigned. None of his shots were used in the film.

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Summary: tora, tora, tora
Review: it's not a bad film, but why would amazon list kurosawa as one of the directors when none of the scenes he shot were in the final film?

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Summary: Excellent pseudo-documentary film
Review: Any one who has read my review of the recent Pearl Harbor film will know what was wrong with that film and why. Thankfully, the battle must not suffer with a horrible film based off of it, and we can turn to this one for support and relief.

I believe many people unfortunately try to look at this film as any other film. I guess they expect a corny love story, or maybe a racial issue, or perhaps even a father-son fight that gets resolved during or after the battle. But you have none of that, and that is why this film is so good: it is about the Battle of Pearl Harbor, why it happened, who fought in it, and who is responsible for its consequences. As the title of my review says, its pretty much a "pseudo-documentary."

The Japanese side is shown just as much as the American side, and it is fascinating to watch a World War II film that gives you such balance on the different parts in the war. We watch the planning, the dialogue between the Japanese commanders, most of them different in tone and experience, and when the battle finally happens you are just as much aware of what the men in the Zeros are thinking as much as the men in the battleships (perhaps the men in the Zeros more so).

The battle scenes themselves are well done, no stock footage is used like the movie "Midway," and every event of the battle is fairly covered. And they last a good while, it doesn't just go for ten minutes like the movie formally called "Pearl Harbor." This film is about the battle, and so it presents it to the best of its ability.

Shortly after I saw the movie "Pearl Harbor," I watched a documentary on the History Channel about the battle. As it talked about the battle, I realized there was so much the movie could have put in to include more of the battle...and then I realized something; "Tora Tora Tora" DOES include all of that.

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Summary: I Fear All We Have Done Was to Awaken a Sleeping Giant
Review: There are not many movies that portray the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as anything but what it was--a carefully planned massive assault on a totally unprepared United States naval base. TORA TORA TORA is not Hollywood's typical war movie that places character exposition at the forefront. Here directors Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku for the Japanese and Richard Fleischer for the United States detail a film that is more documentary than character driven. Yet, despite this sense of hidden-camera reality that focuses on all ranks from admiral to seaman, the actors succeed in infusing the film with a feeling that on both sides there were no heroes or villans. In fact, if there is any villainy, it is not the attacking Japanese who must wear the mantle of evil but rather the slipshod arrogance of those who were entrusted to defend Pearl Harbor against just the kind of annihilation that struck on that Sunday morning in December, 1941. The Japanese side is told primarily through the perspective of Admiral Yamamoto (So Yamamura), who was in overall command of the attack fleet, and Lt. Commander Fuchida (Takahiro Tamura), who was one of the Zero pilots on the first attack wave. Yamamoto is a cautious commander, one who has no political agenda, but is determined to carry out his objective exactly even if it means not taking advantage of unexpected opportunities to wreak further destruction on American ships. He will preserve his fleet above all else. Fuchida has a much more narrow view; when he sees that a second attack wave is needed to finish the job, he is appalled that Yamamoto has instead ordered the fleet to return to Japan. Neither of them is presented as the stereotyped buck-toothed sabre-rattling Jap so often presented in a previous generation's war movie. Each in his own way is strictly business. The American side is anchored by Martin Balsam as Admiral Kimmel and Richard Anderson as Captain Earle. Kimmel is a competent commander who discovers too late that bureaucratic bungling of misguided messages can have the most tragic of consequences. When the attack begins, he is stunned but quickly organizes what defenses he has. The fall guy is Earle, who might have gained a precious few hours of advanced warning had he heeded the implications of frantic radio messages suggesting an attack was imminent. Yet, Earle is a one-dimensional stick man who collectively symbolizes the head-in-the-sand myopia that then afflicted US military intelligence about the oncoming Rising Sun whirlwind.

TORA TORA TORA is a film of rapidly shifting points of view. The first three quarters is a microscopic analysis of the events preceding the attack. The Japanese are seen as supremely confident that they will achieve total surprise. In fact, when the first Zero fighters are in view of Pearl, they are astounded to note that not one shot has been fired at them. An American radar station operator notes that his radar screen shows a massive inflight of unidentified planes, but a call to his superiors results in his being told not to worry. The American fleet and dozens of combat planes are neatly stacked in rows, just waiting to be picked off. The Americans, by contrast, are blithely oblivious to what now seems like unmistakable warnings of looming disaster. In Washington, Japanese ambassadors Nomura (Shogo Shimada) and Kurusu (Hisao Toake) wait patiently outside the door of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, knowing full well what was then occuring on the other end of the world. For the briefest moment, Nomura is seen as a man who is profoundly saddened that he is a forced puppet mouthing words of a futile peace.

All of the behind the scenes style of film making is needed as a segue to the catastrophic air assault on Pearl. The attack, which lasts for an extended thirty minutes, is stunningly effective, even more so than the computer-enhanced graphics of the recent remake with Ben Affleck. Essentially, the Japanese airplanes swoop down and destroy both docked ship and arrayed plane. The return fire is piecemeal. Here and there is a spirited ra-ta-ta by a lone America gunner. The surprise is complete. Three battleships are sunk, and nearly every plane is destroyed on the ground. These scenes of carnage are difficult to watch, yet they serve to remind us that eternal vigilance is needed for a proud country to survive. The dramatic focus of the movie is not on the destruction of the Pacific fleet at all, but surprisingly on the Japanese view of that destruction. The Japanese had intended to declare war first, and then to attack, but a bungling on their part reversed this order. A despondent Admiral Yamamoto concludes the film by noting to his otherwise jubilantly cheering subordinates: "I can hardly imagine a way that is more likely to infuriate the Americans. I fear that all we have done was to awaken a sleeping giant." TORA TORA TORA is unique among war films in that it shows that even in war, there are men of good conscience who are caught up in matters over which they have very little control.

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Summary: Good for presenting history, not so good as a movie
Review: Tora! Tora! Tora! is one those epic, cast-of-thousands, documentary-style WWII movies that Hollywood was fond of back in the 60's and 70's. It does a few things well: it sticks closely to the facts (at least as I understand them), shows the conflict from both sides without any blatant bias, and culminates in an extended depiction of the attack on Pearl Harbor. (It actually goes a little over the top there and starts to feel a bit like an action movie parody at some points: just when you think it's over, it keeps going and going and going.)

The big flaw is that the film forgets that war isn't just about battles, but also about people. The characters rarely/barely register--surely their real-life counterparts were more interesting--and the few prominent actors, like Jason Robards, fail to make much of an impression. Compare the classic D-Day documentary-style epic, The Longest Day. That film also stays close to the facts and shows the battle intelligently from both sides. Unlike the plodding Tora! Tora! Tora!, it keeps you engaged by featuring both historical realism and very memorable characters (based on real people, as in Tora! Tora! Tora!) memorably played by a who's who of great actors: Richard Burton, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Sean Connery, Eddie Albert, Curd Juergens, and many more. You can say the same sorts of complimentary things about the epic A Bridge Too Far, which is vastly better written, directed, and acted than Tora! Tora! Tora!.

Tora! Tora! Tora! is surprisingly dry and boring most of the time, especially considering the dramatic, historically vital subject. There are many far better WWII films: The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, Twelve O'Clock High, The Great Escape, Patton, Das Boot, Stalingrad, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, Enemy at the Gates, The Thin Red Line, to name just a few.

Still, despite the longeurs and often forgettable characters, Tora! Tora! Tora! is a decent introduction to a pivotal battle in world history. It tries to let the facts speak for themselves instead of resorting to cheap melodrama or sentimentality. It's just not good as a dramatic film; history and drama should go together, not be opposed.

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Summary: The true Pearl Harbor movie
Review: Tora! Tora! Tora! is a highly historical film that made an attempt to cover the entire ground of what happened on December 7th, 1941. And I think they succeeded in doing this, giving us an education on how Pearl Harbor came about, why the Japanese bombed us, and what went wrong. I was very pleased with how this film was molded and crafted and how real the movie was.

Reading from other people's reviews, I have found that some complaints are about the length of the movie and that it is boring. Well it is boring if history being converted to film bothers you. But if you like to get down to the skinny of things and kinda find out why things happen, why 12/7/41 occured then this film is fascinating not boring.

Another complaint is how the Japanese are shown as smart and wise and the Americans as stupid or slow. Well, to be honest, history says that is a correct analysis of the way things were. Our command at Pearl Harbor was inept, they did stupid things, they made poor decisions, the White House made serious flaws that made way for the attack to become imminent. And the Japanese were very determined, very ingenius on their planning of this attack. They had a lot of time to think about this raid, so naturally when one is well organized that person is going to be portrayed as smart. The Japanese out smarted us on that day, or as the film shows, that year of '41.

I liked how this film led up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, beginning several months prior to the raid. This gave us an idea what was going on in both sides' minds. It gave equal time to the Japanese strategists and to American high command and intelligence. If anybody has a problem with a war film giving each side an equal balance in a film, as far as point of view, then don't watch this film.

My only concern for this film, that costed it one star, is that you never get to know any of the characters. They are kind of distant characters, obviously just imitating historical people long gone, but even then I think the viewers would like to get to know the characters. Because there were so many characters, and the point of views switches so often, I can see where this is a problem. But it's the sacrifice you give when you have lots of characters you want to give equal perspectives to. Still, one character you could really get to know in this film is something I still expected.

As a result to no real deep character you can follow in this film, this movie is nothing more but a historical documentary with movie drama and sequences. And this is OK, it's a good 4 star war movie. But it isn't the most entertaining either. I do recommend this movie, but please don't watch it with the expectation of being entertained with action. Watch it because you want to know more about what happened before and during December 7th, 1941.

Grade: B-

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Summary: Possibly THE greatest film ever made
Review: This in-depth portrayal of the infamous December 7, 1941 attack on the US Navy Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor is possibly one of the most researched and accurate historical films ever produced. It provides a magnificent viewing experience, and despite not having the fancy and exuberant special effects that the recent flick "Pearl Harbor" was filled with, it is possibly the most enjoyable war movie you can watch. Unlike the more recent film, which was undoubtedly directed at today's younger crowd, who (aside from myself and those like me) are less interested in history and more interested in lots of explosions and sweet tender emotions, this film did not blaspheme the attack by turning an account of it into a stupid love story. It's just the politics, strategies, mistakes, and triumphs that made December 7, 1941 the saddest day in American history up until September 11 of 2001.

One of the greatest aspects of this film is that it sheds light on the absolute brilliance of the Japanese Naval strategists. Admirals Yamamoto and Nagumo and Commander Genda were three of the greatest military leaders/strategists of World War II, and possibly, of all time. The film presents the attack not as a barbaric act of unprovoked massacre, as most Americans would like to think it was, but rather, as a decisive military move in the better interests of Japan. After all, as (the character who played) Yamamoto stated in the film, the Americans would have been (and proved to be) the most difficult enemy that Japan had ever fought. The attack was basically an act of desperation, as the warmongering Japanese Army, who controlled politics, blatantly rejected the Navy's pleas to avoid a war. I was very happy to see this film treating the brilliant Japanese planners and pilots not as the heartless murderers that many ignorant Americans see them as, but rather as the national heroes that they had become for Japan by acting in what they believed was the best interest of their nation. After all, isn't that how we think of our soldiers? If it isn't, then we need to sit down and examine our conscience.

Even without the jazzy special effects, this film recreates the combat scenes very well. Unless you're a computer geek who believes that special effects make a movie and the story line is just there for the hell of it, you won't notice any problem with the explosions and aerial combat. In fact, the replica Japanese aircraft (BT-13s and AT-6s modified to look like A6M 'Zeke' [Zero] fighters, D3A1 'Val' dive bombers, and B5N2 'Kate' torpedo bombers) and American P-40s engaging in actual aerial maneuvering was much more spectacular than if it had been recreated on computer screens. The pyrotechnics used were fantastic as well, and the scene of a B-17 landing with one wheel up was a scene to remember. On a side note, if anyone was ever fortunate enough to catch the Commemorative Air Force's (formerly Confederate Air Force) reenactment of the attack at an air show, they actually had the B-17 "Texas Raiders" crank one wheel down and fly LOW over the runway to recreate that very scene! I'm not sure if they still do that, but that was the kind of thing that made memories!

Overall, if you want a truly unbiased account of the attack on Pearl Harbor, without the liberal twist thrown in to make it look like our brass and President were helpless victims instead of revealing the mistakes made by the top levels of our government and armed forces, then you'll love "Tora! Tora! Tora!" I recommend it to anyone with an interest in war movies, military history, naval warfare, aviation, or just plain great movies.

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Summary: Blows "Pearl Harbor" Outta The Water...!!!
Review: After watching this film I can't even compare it to the 2001 version featuring Ben Affleck. This movie is in a different(and higher) class. First of all the acting is superior, no sappy love-story, and also it's historically accurate as well. If you'll excuse the pun this movie blows Ben's movie outta the water! The 2001 souped-up Hollywood crap cannot even come close to this work of art. Alot of research was put into this film and both Japanese and American points of view are shown throughout the movie. You don't see any Hollywood heartthrob actors who cannot act, just good solid acting. Yes the 1970s special effects are not up to par with todays CGIs but its still way ahead of its time and folks if you ask me the acting and storyline more than makes up for it. So if you want to REALLY witness what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 buy this film you wont be dissapointed. If you wanna just watch Ben Affleck and crew (who cannot act) go through the motions with a crappy Hollywood formula-movie then go rent/buy Pearl Harbor.