In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words use by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, covers the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which plunged America into the Second World War.
Martin Balsam Sō Yamamura Joseph Cotten Tatsuya Mihashi E.G. Marshall James Whitmore Takahiro Tamura Eijirō Tōno Jason Robards Wesley Addy Shōgo Shimada Frank Aletter Koreya Senda Leon Ames Jun Usami Richard Anderson Kazuo Kitamura Keith Andes Susumu Fujita Edward Andrews Bontarō Miake Neville Brand Ichirō Ryūzaki Leora Dana Asao Uchida George Macready Norman Alden Kazuko Ichikawa Walter Brooke Show All…
トラ・トラ・トラ！, 偷袭珍珠港, Тора! Тора! Тора!, トラ・トラ・トラ！：1970, 虎！虎！虎！, Tora ! Tora ! Tora !, Angrebet på Pearl Harbour, Τόρα! Τόρα! Τόρα!, טורה! טורה! טורה!, 偷襲珍珠港, 도라! 도라! 도라!
Hungary12
BrazilL
USAG
GreecePG
JapanG
AustraliaPG
UKPG
FranceTP
Netherlands12
Germany16
Italy
PortugalM/12
Spain
Norway15
Czechia15+
Netherlands6
Netherlands6
Netherlands6
Australia
Brazil
Czechia
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
Norway
Portugal
Spain
UK
USA
Admiral Yamamoto and company plan and pull off the Pearl Harbor attack, while their American counterparts completely drop the ball in this patient and detailed historical procedural. Do the Americans at the highest levels of the Roosevelt administration fuck up the copious warnings they had on purpose though? This film doesn't NOT imply this. The first half is very dry, but in the second half they blow up everything and film lots of real airplanes, explosions and property damage. Pretty ballsy to have half this movie in Japanese and give Yamamoto and his staff a lot more pathos and personality than any of the Americans.
I like movies like this where there is no real main character, "good" guy or…
Action! - The Way of the Yakuza: The Turbulent Battles of Fukasaku
I've known about this film for a while, but only by name. I had no idea what it was about, and so on. And, to my surprise, it was a really interesting (and presumably pretty accurate) look into all the behind-the-scenes events leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack from both the US and Japan's perspectives, which of course gives us a more complete picture of the event. For someone like me, who knew the attack had happened but knew little about the events leading up to it, this was incredibly illuminating. If the movie and some video I watched about the atomic bomb drops on Hiroshima and…
This was The Pearl Harbor Movie up until Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor was released. Unlike that movie, Tora! Tora! Tora! is a pretty standard, straight-laced, stodgy and almost documentary-like telling of the events leading up to that fateful day. For a movie title containing three exclamation points, it's a bit of a slog in places.
However, having been to Pearl Harbor and stood on that platform over the U.S.S. Arizona and hearing the horrible events that took place there, I can honestly say it punches you right in the gut. To see the attack unfold in this movie is really something. Once it begins, this movie is as gripping as anything.
I also liked that the Japanese were given half the movie to tell it from their own perspective. That's quite admirable, and not something I would have assumed Hollywood would do at that time, so good for them.
August 2016: Scavenger Hunt #17
TASK #18: A film with only repeated words in the title (e.g. "Liar Liar" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!" but not "Kramer vs. Kramer" or "Run Lola Run")!
Inarguably a far superior Hollywood treatment of the attack on Pearl Harbor than whatever trite Michael Bay, Randall Wallace, and Jerry Bruckheimer farted out in 2001. Unlike that dung heap, Tora! Tora! Tora! is not bogged down by a pointless love triangle. The script for this (remarkably coherent given the multiple writers involved) is actually very well-researched (to the point where one can consider it a glorified documentary) and consistently, thoroughly engaging due to the fact that we see the events of the attack from both points of…
You wanted confirmation, Captain? Take a look! There's your confirmation!
-Lieutenant Kaminsky
It's an impressive feat that three screenwriters and three directors were able to come together and make a coherent narrative out of this dense fact based dramatization of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. It's a borderline documentary and if it had included any real footage it would probably be classified as one.
The events leading up to the attack would be fascinating just from the US side of things, but here we see both sides of how it all transpired and the attack itself is kinda scary. There's a scene or two that do NOT look planned out and seems like more then a couple of people are legitimately running for their lives.
It might play like a glorified documentary, but it's a fascinating one.
Spectacular aerial footage (featuring a massive amount of planes) and picturesque backgrounds combine for breathtaking cinematography, and contains enough perfectly symmetrical establishing shots utilizing futura font titles to make a strong plagiarism case against Wes Anderson.
Attempts to take a balanced view of the events around Pearl Harbor while remaining incredibly visually stimulating.
Tora! Tora! Tora!
A film so important, so powerful, so explosive that it requires three exclamation marks!!!
I remember the incredible advertising blitz around Tora! Tora! Tora! when I was a kid. It looked big. Epic big. I was a bit too young to see it theatrically. Throughout the years I always managed to miss it on TV.
As the 70’s style opening credits rolled, I was rather cynical that the ‘true, accurate account of events’ were to be, in fact, true and accurate. I was just hoping that this wasn’t going to be over the top propaganda. Then I noticed that both the American and Japanese stars seemed to be getting equal billing, and that the Japanese segment had…
Dramatization of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The film works because the Japanese segments are directed and written by Japanese crew (one of which was Akira Kurosawa before he left the project for creative differences).
The attack set pieces are particularly effective, as are some of the airborne sequences.
I’ve no idea if it is all historically accurate, (a series of high level technical and strategic blunders by the USA Navy and Army basically let to the attack happening) but I bought into it.
Extended Japanese Version
As WW2 epics go, Tora! Tora! Tora! is one of the driest, essentially a fictionalised documentary, it is entirely uninterested in drama, characters and entertainment value. This lack of engaging narrative wasn't favourable with critics and it remains rotten on Rotten Tomatoes.
This isn't entirely fair in my opinion as the decision to faithfully recreate the events leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbour in rigorous and factually accurate detail is admirable, especially given the huge budget and massive scope of the project. The first half moves fleetingly from office to office and country to country, introducing innumerable historical figures in both Japan and the US and it isn't until after the intermission that any action…
I never thought I’d question my opinion of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor but, after an hour of thinly drawn soldiers, secretaries and politicians reading garbled messages at each other and explaining exactly what they’re doing and who they’re doing it with—in a way that real people absolutely don’t—I longed for the world’s most boring love triangle, just to liven things up. The Japanese characters, not directed by Richard Fleischer, are much more rounded, but I would struggle to name many of the Americans. Even normally engaging actors like Joseph Cotten and Martin Balsam disappear into the greyness of the storytelling.
Yet, where other supposed historical dramas merrily play with history for the sake of even minor narrative convenience, there is…
After watching Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor and not liking it, I had to check this one out. It's better.
It may not be particularly exciting due to its clinical approach, but Tora! Tora! Tora! is a fascinating look at real events simply happening, without gloss or spectacle, but cold and detached objectivity (or as close to it as it can get).
A better movie than Zanuck's earlier The Longest Day which its clearly intended as a companion piece because Pearl Harbor is better suited to such a blow-by-blow dry procedural than a D-day combat film. Most of the pre intermission scenes have a certain flat quality with lots of stiff dialogue, but there's something about its dedication to minutiae and the going through military bureaucracies as the two sides maneuver around each other. It is not really as balanced a film as it wants to, not so much because it is an American film, but because the Japanese scenes (helmed by two strong filmmakers, Fukasaku and Masuda doing solid hack work) have a pulpier quality that sets than a part of…
