Of the World War II epics of my childhood, which have international casts and show both sides of a major battle, Tora! Tora! Tora! comes in third—no fourth—maybe third. I watch The Longest Day and A Bridge too Far at least once a year, while I purchased a used copy of Tora! Tora! Tora! for this project and still don’t own The Battle of Britain or the 1976 Midway (I will never own Midway and neither should you).
All of these movies combine history with action—they show us generals and admirals pointing at maps and talking to help us understand the history behind it and to give us the story of the battle. Sometimes the history part can seem like homework—like the history pill you have to swallow that may or may not have some sort of tasty chocolate/action coating. Actually, they tend to have history coating with an action center that is the reward for taking the pill—either way there’s a part you might find unpleasant and a part you might like.
Tora! Tora! Tora! is unique among these movies. It is the most like a documentary; it has the most homework, and it is the one that you are most likely to give up on before you get to the action. I think you can make it to the action (I believe in you!) and when you do, the action will reward your effort. One reason you can make it is that the Japanese part of the homework is often entertaining.
The film is about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and events leading up to it. It is three movies—no it isn’t; it’s one movie with two parts told from two perspectives. It has a fascinating production history and is an interesting collaboration. You should read about that some time.
What matters here is that scenes featuring the Japanese high command and forces were written by Japanese writers, including legendary director Akira Kurosawa, who finally left or was fired, and directed by Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku, while the American parts and most or all the action was directed by Richard Fleischer. So before the attack on Pearl Harbor, we are given two sides of the story from two different teams. It isn’t an American like William Goldman (A Bridge too Far) writing about German attitudes; it’s Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima and Akira Kurosawa writing the Japanese side of the story.
The movie claims to make a good-faith effort to tell the story from both perspectives and appears to succeed far better than any other of the sprawling sagas. The opening is not jingoistic; the movie is not dedicated to the brave or fallen. After a statement that says the attack occurred on December seventh, 1941 and led to American entry into the Second World War, it reads: “All of the events and characters represented are true to historical fact.”
No source I’ve found disputes this claim. The podcast Service on Celluloid has an episode on the film. History Buff also has an episode about it. The complaint, if there is one, is about the movie’s length.
It’s two hours and twenty-four minutes long with an intermission; an intermission is a mid-movie break long movies had back before electricity, so viewers could go to the lobby to smoke and check their cellphones; they were kind of pointless because back then you could smoke in the theater and people only had flip phones, but you could go to the bathroom, so that was nice.
The intermission begins the morning of December seventh, so there is a whole lot of movie before the attack begins.
There’s an extended period where the Japanese leadership debates the feasibility and value of attacking and then plans and practices while Americans frequently go on alert and make a series of mistakes that seem obvious in retrospect.
For many people this extended history lesson is far too extended. But the Japanese parts are more entertaining than the American portions, in part because that part of the story is intrinsically more interesting. The story of someone sneaking up on an unsuspecting sentry is much more interesting than the story of an unsuspecting sentry. “He was standing around; he probably should have looked behind him more frequently.”
The Japanese portion also looks better—it may be the director, or it may be that the formality and the rituals involved with their interactions are more visually appealing. The Japanese sections highlight the internal politics of the high command, the rivalry better between the army and the navy and conflicts inside the Imperial Navy. Admiral Yamamoto apparently was receiving death threats and was considered a coward by some. Japanese leaders argue about the attack in ways that may seem over dramatic but look good and engage your interest.
These are in rather sharp contrast to the scenes of American governmental and military officials in dingy offices littered with typewriters not being able to negotiate a vast bureaucracy and often not believing there is a real threat. People trying to parse the meaning of cables is generally not engaging cinema.
One interesting juxtaposition occurs early. Admiral Yamamoto is watching some of his pilots do test torpedo runs and tells a subordinate to send his congratulations to the group’s leader for a job well done. Later in the movie Admiral Halsey is watching American pilots do practice bombing runs and tells a subordinate to tell one pilot “he couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle.”
The majority of the American sections are poster children for dramatic irony. One character confidently states, “We’re going to be attacked on the thirtieth of November.” Soldiers struggle to put up a radar station and are told if they see anything, “There’s a gas station about a mile down the road. It probably has a telephone.”
Jason Robards’ character, Army General Walter Short, in particular looks like a pompous dope, but that is in retrospect. “Don’t put those planes so close together, you fool!” We yell. This may well have been the smart move, but we know all too well that it spells destruction for the planes.
If you make it to intermission (Did I mention it has an intermission?), I can’t imagine not finding the rest of the film rewarding. The attack itself is well realized. While Washington is writing a strongly worded telegram, but not marking it as “urgent,” Japanese take off from carriers in the morning light, and it is gorgeous.
The attack is a masterpiece of practical effects. Planes explode on the ground while ground crew members run for their lives, Japanese planes stream through, wreaking havoc, and a bomber lands, for real, while one landing gear is not deployed. Things blow up real good.
I’m trying to decide why I don’t rate this movie as high as A Bridge too Far and The Longest Day, and perhaps even below The Battle of Britain—though perhaps not below that movie. I know I have a European theater bias, and I prefer movies about ground troops as opposed to sea or air, but I think there’s more.
This movie is the most like a straight history, but that is not necessarily a criticism. When you compare this to Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, Bay strives to humanize a number of characters, so you feel something when people die in the attack—people you recognize die in Pearl Harbor; no one you know dies in Tora! Tora! Tora! The American heroes depicted are mainly introduced the morning of the seventh, or not so much introduced as just shown. Dorie Miller is shown firing an anti-aircraft gun, but we don’t know anything about him. Medal of Honor winner John Finn is shown acting heroically but doesn’t even get a chyron to tell us who he is.
This is probably for the best because this movie has a lot of ground to cover, and we don’t need the back story of everyone involved. In my review of The Longest Day, I wrote about a character played by Red Buttons: “we don’t care about Red Buttons‘ character because Buttons is famous or likable . . . The situation carries its own inherent drama and doesn’t really need the actor’s help.” We don’t need to know what John Finn was doing the day before–we just need to see him bleeding and firing in the middle of chaos.
Maybe not knowing who he is makes it less engaging. Maybe the movie is too long, but this movie gives a lot of information and a lot of action, and much of it looks great. If you are interested in the history you can and probably will enjoy the first part of the movie, which may be too slow for many and too full of Americans making what we now know are mistakes that may well have been perfectly reasonable assumptions at the time. but maybe me not liking it as much as two of my favorite movies of all time is not that bad.
Recommendation
You can probably see Tora! Tora! Tora! for free sometime, and you should see it, but don’t buy the steelbook unless you have some sort of steelbook problem, like I do. Maybe buy Paul McCartney’s early solo album Ram, which features the song “Uncle Albert/ Admiral Halsey.”