(We are running this review from 2016 in commemoration of Pearl Harbor Day.)
BY LEE PFEIFFER
If ever an epic deserved the Blu-ray deluxe treatment, Fox's 1970 Pearl Harbor spectacular Tora! Tora! Tora! is it. The film was a major money-loser for the studio at the time and replicated the experience of Cleopatra from a decade before in that this single production threatened to bankrupt the studio. Fox had bankrolled a number of costly bombs around this period including Doctor Doolittle, Hello, Dolly and Star! Fortunately, they also had enough hits (Patton, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, M*A*S*H, the Planet of the Apes series) to stay afloat. However, the Tora! debacle cost both Fox chairman Darryl F. Zanuck and his son, production head Richard Zanuck, their jobs. Ironically, Darryl F. Zanuck had saved the studio a decade before by finally bringing Cleopatra to a costly conclusion and off-setting losses with spectacular grosses from his 1962 D-Day blockbuster The Longest Day. By 1966, Zanuck and that film's producer Elmo Williams decided they could make lightning strike twice by using the same formula to recreate the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The project seemed jinxed from the beginning. Skyrocketing costs and logistical problems delayed filming until 1969. By then, America's outlook about war movies had changed radically due to the burgeoning anti-Vietnam movement. Zanuck and Williams also forgot one important distinction between The Longest Day and Tora! Tora! Tora!: the former was about a major Allied victory while the latter was about a tremendous defeat. Americans generally stay away from military movies that depict anything other than glorious victories and Tora! was no exception. Critics were also lukewarm and the only saving grace was that the film performed spectacularly in Japan, largely because it presented both sides of the conflict on a non-judgmental level.
Bringing the story to the screen strained the relationship between
both Zanucks, especially when legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa
was brought on board to helm the Japan-based sequences. What should
have been a tremendous boost to the production became a nightmare when
Kurosawa acted irrationally and burned up money while working at a
snail's pace. He was ultimately fired in a scandal that was seen as an
insult to all of Japan. So much of the budget had been wasted that it
left no major funding for big stars. Unlike The Longest Day, which
boasted a "Who's Who" of international film favorites, Fox could only
hire well-respected character actors with little boxoffice clout. Thus,
the spin was put on the production that they were chosen due to their
resemblance to the actual people they were playing. That notion was
absurd because audiences did not know or care about such nuances,
especially since many of the major figures were not known by their
physical characteristics. Although fine actors such as Jason Robards,
Martin Balsam and James Whitmore gave distinguished performances, the
film lacked the pizazz of John Wayne or Lee Marvin in a lead role.
When the film opened, reviews were respectable at best. The film
received Oscars for technical aspects but was not nominated in major
categories. Yet, Tora's reputation has grown over the years and
today it is much more respected than it was in 1970. The film is a
thinking man's war movie and 2/3 of the film is dedicated to
claustrophobic sequences set in board rooms and conference halls as the
antagonists debate where and when war will break out. Nevertheless, this
aspect of the movie is quite admirable, especially in this era of
dumbed-down, CGI- generated "epics". The screenplay assumes the audience
is intelligent and has the patience to endure a gripping story,
well-told. By the time the actual attack on Pearl Harbor is depicted, it
is quite spectacular, even if the use of miniatures in some scenes is
very apparent. The film is enhanced by the extremely efficient
co-direction of Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda.
Most refreshingly, the Japanese characters are anything but ethnic
stereotypes, which adds immensely to the impact of their side of the
story.Special mention should be made of Jerry Goldsmith's innovative,
pulse-pounding score that brilliantly heightens suspense as the time
line draws nearer to the attack.
Fox's Blu-ray edition looks magnificent and contains a wealth of
bonus extras that include numerous original Fox Movietone WWII
newsreels, the excellent AMC network documentary about the making of the
film as well as an equally impressive History Channel documentary that
examines how accurately the film depicted real events, Day of Infamy
(another very good documentary), the original trailer, commentary by
Fleischer and film historian Stuart Galbraith IV and two still photo
galleries. Astonishingly , Fox makes a major faux pas by not even
listing on the packaging the fact that the set contains the entire
Japanese release version of the movie, which includes ten minutes of
footage not seen in the American cut. Not surprisingly, the extra
footage is dedicated to the Japanese sequences and contains one bizarre,
largely superfluous sequence centering on two cooks aboard one of the
war ships. The Blu-ray has a menu that is rather awkward to find certain
features through but the disc is attractively packaged in a small
hardcover book that has plenty of insights about the film, biographies
of cast members and a wealth of rare photos.
Tora! Tora! Tora! has only grown in stature over the decades-
and Fox's magnificent Blu-ray release does justice to the type of
ambitious epic we simply don't see today.