Review of Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) by Tim H — 16 Jan 2008

Oh my God, this movie sucked balls! That's right. It's a movie that's old that I hate. What? I can have an opinion.

First I have to state something. I promised that I would mark it one start lower than it really was because Gary from work loves this movie. Here's where I kind of screwed myself. Gary likes a lot of movies that I like, but that's because he likes them because they are war films. I like movies like The Great Escape and Stalag 17 because they are objectively amazing films. So I simply assumed that Tora! Tora! Tora! would be one of them. But then this movie ended up sucking really badly. And here's why.

This really isn't a movie. There isn't a protagonist. There isn't an antagonist. There aren't characters really. This is literally just a telling of how the bombing of Pearl Harbor came about. Now, if I saw this on the History Channel, I would give it five stars because the budget is fantastic and the cinematography is half way decent. But f*ck, guys, I don't care about having a soulless, text-book telling of Pearl Harbor. This movie is just spectacle and that doesn't sit right with me. I mean, you have Martin Balsam for God's sake.

But I feel like I should point this out. Akira Kurosawa got fired from this movie. I can imagine why. He was probably actually trying to make a fantastic, emotional film out of this and what they wanted was non-confrontation between the American and Japanese directors. This might be one of the harder things that I have to review because I was just bored through the entire thing. I was just watching for the first two hours (that's right, the movie is clocks in at 2:20+) and just screaming "Bomb them already." And once they bomb Pearl Harbor (sorry for ruining the ending), it's just explosions for a long time and people acting shocked how this could happen. I don't know how they could be shocked because they discuss how this is going to happen the entire film. Literally, most of the movie is a flash of a man's name and then that guy talking to a lot of people about how perfect Pearl Harbor is as a target. What kind of scriptwriting is that? I totally envisioned this military buff just sitting there over his book of tactics pointing out how inaccurate every other Pearl Harbor movie was. Sorry, but if I want to learn about Pearl Harbor, I'll read a textbook. Sh*t. I have a history minor and I was still bored sh*tless. Boo on you movie! Boo on you! You and Gary belong together.

Instead of Tora! Tora! Tora!, it should have been Tora :( Tora :( Tora:(.