By sticking three exclamation points in the title, the producers of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" seemed to acknowledge in advance that their product needed pumping up. Boy, does it ever. Ingmar Bergman didn't make movies as static as this.
Here's a "Tora! Tora! Tora!" drinking game you can play. Take a slug of beer every time someone in the film opens or closes a door. Take another when someone puts a piece of paper in an attaché case, or picks up a phone. If an American says something about deciphering the Japanese diplomatic code, or a Japanese guy says something relatively mundane in a screaming voice, have another. Just don't drive after, or your car will look like that PBY that got caught on the runway at Hickam Field.
"Tora! Tora! Tora!" is a Japanese-American co-production about the attack on Pearl Harbor, according to this film something of a co-production itself. The Americans were bull-headed about keeping an embargo against Japan, moving its fleet from San Diego to Hawaii in response to Japanese aggression in China. As one Japanese officer says, "That fleet is a knife leveled at Japan's throat," meaning the only thing to do about it is to bomb the U.S. Navy into scrap metal by means of a surprise attack.
"Tora! Tora! Tora!" emphasizes the courage of the Japanese forces, the idiocy of the American leaders, and the disappointment of not catching the Americans even more by surprise i.e. with their carriers in the harbor as well. Not surprisingly, the film was a big hit in one country and sank like the Arizona in the other.
The film even goes out of its way to excuse the sneaky nature of the Japanese attack, suggesting a slow typist at the Japanese embassy kept the U.S. from getting "a declaration of war" (as Admiral Yamamoto later puts it) minutes before the attack began. In fact, the message being typed was just breaking off negotiations; Japan waited until late December before formally declaring war, as if it still needed saying. But in keeping with the script's no-fault agenda, this is obfuscated in favor of comments by Yamamoto about having awoken a sleeping giant that never in fact took place.
Give the Japanese some credit: They are a lot easier to watch in this movie. Both sections of the double narrative suffer from repetitive, awkward exposition scenes ("No wonder you decided to call it Operation Magic!" codebreaker E.G. Marshall says, with all the subtlety of Rick Moranis' Dark Helmet turning to the camera and asking "Everyone got that!" in "Spaceballs"), but at least the two Japanese directors, Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda, give you more interesting backdrops and some impressive martial pageantry to break up the tedium and help you stay interested until the fighting breaks out 90 minutes in. On the American side, Richard Fleischer shoots people walking in and out of rooms.
Neville Brand and James Whitmore are the only standouts on the American side, while the Japanese cast led by Soh Yamamura (Yamamato) and Takahiro Tamura (Fushida, leader of the first assault wave) get across what little energy the film has until we get to the attacks themselves. These are impressively staged both from the air and water, and you feel a sense of helplessness and power that eyewitness accounts of the attack, however eloquent, never quite convey. It's just that it takes too long getting there. I've never before been in the position of wanting American ships to hurry up and sink; it meant the movie would be over that much faster.
Here's a "Tora! Tora! Tora!" drinking game you can play. Take a slug of beer every time someone in the film opens or closes a door. Take another when someone puts a piece of paper in an attaché case, or picks up a phone. If an American says something about deciphering the Japanese diplomatic code, or a Japanese guy says something relatively mundane in a screaming voice, have another. Just don't drive after, or your car will look like that PBY that got caught on the runway at Hickam Field.
"Tora! Tora! Tora!" is a Japanese-American co-production about the attack on Pearl Harbor, according to this film something of a co-production itself. The Americans were bull-headed about keeping an embargo against Japan, moving its fleet from San Diego to Hawaii in response to Japanese aggression in China. As one Japanese officer says, "That fleet is a knife leveled at Japan's throat," meaning the only thing to do about it is to bomb the U.S. Navy into scrap metal by means of a surprise attack.
"Tora! Tora! Tora!" emphasizes the courage of the Japanese forces, the idiocy of the American leaders, and the disappointment of not catching the Americans even more by surprise i.e. with their carriers in the harbor as well. Not surprisingly, the film was a big hit in one country and sank like the Arizona in the other.
The film even goes out of its way to excuse the sneaky nature of the Japanese attack, suggesting a slow typist at the Japanese embassy kept the U.S. from getting "a declaration of war" (as Admiral Yamamoto later puts it) minutes before the attack began. In fact, the message being typed was just breaking off negotiations; Japan waited until late December before formally declaring war, as if it still needed saying. But in keeping with the script's no-fault agenda, this is obfuscated in favor of comments by Yamamoto about having awoken a sleeping giant that never in fact took place.
Give the Japanese some credit: They are a lot easier to watch in this movie. Both sections of the double narrative suffer from repetitive, awkward exposition scenes ("No wonder you decided to call it Operation Magic!" codebreaker E.G. Marshall says, with all the subtlety of Rick Moranis' Dark Helmet turning to the camera and asking "Everyone got that!" in "Spaceballs"), but at least the two Japanese directors, Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda, give you more interesting backdrops and some impressive martial pageantry to break up the tedium and help you stay interested until the fighting breaks out 90 minutes in. On the American side, Richard Fleischer shoots people walking in and out of rooms.
Neville Brand and James Whitmore are the only standouts on the American side, while the Japanese cast led by Soh Yamamura (Yamamato) and Takahiro Tamura (Fushida, leader of the first assault wave) get across what little energy the film has until we get to the attacks themselves. These are impressively staged both from the air and water, and you feel a sense of helplessness and power that eyewitness accounts of the attack, however eloquent, never quite convey. It's just that it takes too long getting there. I've never before been in the position of wanting American ships to hurry up and sink; it meant the movie would be over that much faster.