Cheap Tora! Tora! Tora! (DVD) (Martin Balsam, Sô Yamamura, Joseph Cotten, Jason Robards) (Toshio Masuda, Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku) Price

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Verisimilitude permeates throughout the film, from the full-sized mockups of Japanese aircraft carriers and the battleship Nagano to the Japanese Zero, Kate, and Val aircraft and American P-40 Warhawk fighters to the miniature and full-sized models of American battleships. Much of the combat footage was shot at Pearl itself and surrounding Air Force bases, while miniature work blends splendidly into the action.

The enormous cast captures the exchanges of ideas and arguments among the various players involved in the attack. The most sympathetic player is Admiral Yamamoto. The film very nicely captures his lack of desire to go to war with an America that could not possibly lose a war with Japan based on the comparative industrial power of both nations. Also captured is the greater bloodthirstiness of fellow Imperial Japanese Navy officers, leading to a chilling scene during final pre-sortie debriefing when Yamamoto orders that the First Air Fleet abort the mission should negotiations with America succeed; fellow officers universally reject such an order, until Yamamoto hisses that any officer unwilling to follow should resign at once.

Also captured are the motions of General Walter Short (Jason Robards) and Admiral Husband Kimmel (Martin Balsam), working to second-guess Japanese intentions minus intelligence data available to US Navy intelligence in Washington. Navy intelligence accurately guesses that intercepted Japanese diplomatic messages indicate Tokyo to be preapring for war, but there is never any indication that Pearl Harbor itself will be attacked.

But it is, and the attack is brilliantly recreated. Battleships are hit by torpedos and bombs, planes parked together to prevent sabotage are slaughtered trying to take off, and the result is the greatest naval disaster suffered by American arms.

But Admiral Yamamoto knows that what will result will be catastrophic for Japan, and the film ends with him staring into the sky - into the future.

For sheer perfection, Tora! Tora! Tora! succeeds.

Takes precedence over the history of "Pearl Harbor."
"Tora! Tora! Tora!" has been re-released on VHS and DVD to capitalize on the opening of Michael Bay's newest film treatment of the events of December 7th, 1941. This leaves it wide open for comparisons to "Pearl Harbor," while also showing the vast contrasts of the movie-making and storytelling techniques of the past and the present. I'm not too keen on war movies, at least not the ones long ago which seem to be made for war veterans alone, but this one is not that bad. It is a bit tedious at times, but not a failure.

The movie sticks solely with historical events, choosing to keep any ficticious plotlines for another film. It's a joint collaboration between the American and Japanese filmmakers in order to get everything just right in terms of accuracy, and it succeeds. The Japanese are shown making the plans to attack the United States where they are most vulnerable, while also keeping US government officials at bay with talks of negotiation and peace. It wastes no time in letting us know that Pearl Harbor is the place for the attack, and from that point on, the Japanese make their unsighted journey across the Pacific for the legendary "day of infamy."

On the opposite side of the Pacific, the United States is constantly in a frenzy, as we cross-cut between scenes at Pearl Harbor before the attack and Washington D.C., where various government officials run frantically around trying the decode Japanese messages intercepted on machinery that makes today's desktop computers look like pocket calculators. Once they start realizing that Japan is up to something, they take their findings, from translated messages to their own theories, to those in charge of making commands.

Of course, no one believes until it is too late that something could be brewing in the Pacific. As the Japanese close in, things begin to get faster as planes take off from carriers and the first intercepts of Honolulu radio are heard in their cockpits. The bombs start exploding, the ships start burning, and everyone comes to realize just what a mistake they made in not listening to the warnings.

Now, everyone has been comparing the way in which "Pearl Harbor" was concocted to the creation of "Titanic;" this is in terms of movie-making. In terms of what actually happened historically, the story of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" can also be compared to the Titanic tragedy. The Titanic sank because warnings of ice and dangerous seas were ignored repeatedly. It's the same case with the Pearl Harbor bombing: American officials chose to wave off the signs as mere fiction or coincidence (at one point, as the Japanese planes are flying towards Hawaii, one official shrugs them off as B-17 planes flying in from training). And just as the sinking of the Titanic was a great tragedy for many, so was the devastation of Pearl Harbor, which led American to declare war on Japan.

The attack portion of this movie does leave a bit to be desired, and perhaps this is because I'm a child of the technological era, where special effects do a lot of storytelling these days. This sequence, when put into the same arena as the effects-driven attack portion of "Pearl Harbor," pales in comparison. "Tora!" is mostly comprised of aerial shots of the attack, and the effects are really cheesy, just what you'd expect from a war movie of the past. "Pearl" has more technology to toy with, and certainly makes good use of it, pumping the scenes full of adrenaline and pulse-pounding action to blow you away.

But still, "Tora!" wins over. The history involved in its unfolding of events is superb, even if a bit long. It brings out the inevitable comparisons to the latest Pearl Harbor treatment, while also making itself known as a landmark historical film.

Superb!
After seeing Das Boot for the first time recently, my interest was piqued for another WWII movie. I remember when Tora! was in the theater while I was in high school...and that I had no interest in seeing it at the time. This is a serious-minded, fact-based film of epic proportion. It has similarities to Das Boot in that part of the story is told from the US enemy's point of view. And, oddly enough, I found the structure of the film to be somewhat reminiscent of The Deer Hunter, or even King Solomon's Mines [1950], in that there is a long, detailed build-up of the story prior to any action sequences. And once the action arrived, I sat there thinking, "How did they do this?" Especially considering the fact that this was 1970. But the biggest reward for me is the story itself, and the non-Hollywood way in which it is told here. No one would get financial backing today for a film of this expense coupled with such a non-fiction approach.