Tora! Tora! Tora!
Directed by Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, and Toshio Masuda
Written by Larry Forrester, Hideo Oguni and Ryuzo Kikushima
1970/Japan/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Netflix rental
“At 1:23pm Zeros were approaching Pearl Harbor where it was 7:53am. At that moment the flight commander radioed Admiral Nagumo “TORA, TORA, TORA” The repeated code word, meaning “tiger,” stood for ‘We have succeeded in surprise attack’.” Two minutes later torpedo bombers began diving on Battleship Row.”
― Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath
Fans of explosions need look no farther!
This US-Japanese views the attack on Pearl Harbor from the perspective of both sides. The Japanese dialogue is subtitled. The period encompasses from a couple of weeks before the attack to the attack itself.
The first half of the movie tries to cram in as much history as possible through expository dialogue. So we get some long speeches and not too much excitement or memorable characters to identify with.
But then the bombers come and all hell breaks loose! With Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, E. G. Marshall and James Whitmore as bigwigs on the U.S. side and So Yamamura as Admiral Yamamoto.
The special effects are the reason to watch this. It might not seem like so much now but this was about as good as it got in 1969.
A.D. Abbott and L. P. Flowers won the Academy Award for Best Special Visual Effects.
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