Skip to main content

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

Tora! Tora! Tora!. Feature film. (1970, 144 mins) IMDB

...Get a sense of what it might have been like on the day the Japanse attacked Pearl Harbour...

T

ora! Tora! Tora! was the code word the Japanese military used for its attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. When the bomber and fighter pilots heard those words, they knew the attack was a go.

The film shows the events leading up to the attack from both the US and Japanese point of view. Unlike a lot of WWII movies, the Japanese military men speak their native language instead of Hollywood English. I prefer that approach even if the white subtitles are sometimes washing out because the background is white. White on white doesn't work.

There are no stars in this film because the focus shifts from one of many characters and the focus is mainly on the mandarins in Washington and Tokyo or the generals and admirals. We never connect with a private on the ground or a seaman on a ship unlike a lot of war movies. In that sense, the film is more a documentary made with professional actors and very large budget than a feature film. Yet I enjoyed it. I was intrigued by the bureaucratic bungling and diplomatic talks. The battle sequences were believable and filled with real explosions--not CGI smoke and flames.

The film doesn't address the revisionist history of the event. Did FDR know the attack was coming? Did anyone else know? Could it have been avoided?

Posted 2009/03/27 at 20h05ET in Movie Commentary.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Words: Licence— License

Sunday, August 26, 2012 Easy to miss this one. LICENCE—Always a noun. He has a licence to collect alien spaceships. British spelling variation. LICENSE—A noun. A verb. U.S. spelling variation for noun. The federal Bureau for Interplanetary Affairs is empowered to license individuals, corporations and charities. Licence License Licence to Kill by John Gardner Artistic License by Julie Hyzy Posted 2012/08/26 at 18h24ET in Words , Writing .

If Only We Could Agree

Monday, June 11, 2012 ... have you been accused of misspelling a word you know is correct ... S usanne O’Leary wrote an interesting article on her experience with the variations of the English language in different countries. You know the obvious ones like colour with or without a “u” but less obvious ones like travelled versus traveled. Growing up in Sweden she learnt English in school—the UK variation. In publishing her books, she read reviews where she was criticized for improper spelling. False accusations as it turns out. While I write tire and cozy, it’s not incorrect to write tyre or cosy. Same language. Both accepted. Just different. You can read her write-up here along with the numerous comments posted by readers. I found it interesting, but that’s me. As a Canadian I deal with this issue everyday. I feel her pain when she’s criticized for something based on ignorance. No fun. I was told by a boss that “data are” isn’t correct. It should be “data is.” Read

Days 9-108: Writing a Novel—The Deep Blue Hold

November 25th, 2016 to March 5, 2017 Note: Unedited writings from my notebook for this novel. Square bracket items represent added comments. At 15:53 Office ... And so began a three month odyssey away from writing this novel, The Deep Blue Hold. ... W herein I try to explain why I stopped working on this novel. The shortest answer is I gave up. The short explanation is I struggle with mental health issues (MDD, GAD, PTSD) that paralyse me at times. When it happens, I’m not able to do much of anything. Don’t want to do anything and that includes things one might expect to enjoy. For a while I spent time trying to create some thirty-second videos that would play a word puzzle like a crossword. Here’s the clue. Here’s the blank spaces. And after an interval, one of the letters would appear until all the letters appear. A bit of a crossword puzzle in that sometimes you come to a word where crossover words give you certain letters and you have to fill in the rest. A