This movie is one of the many World War II movies that came out in the 1960 and 70's that were more of a dramatization then they were for entertainment value. The biggest indicator in these types of movies is that the star power is almost nil. The biggest star in this movie is Jason Robards. Yet, if you want to learn about the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor without reading about it, then this is a very good movie to watch.

The movie Tora, Tora, Tora is based on factual events leading up to the Japanese surprise attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base on December 7th, 1941. It goes into detail how the American Intelligence units were able to decipher the coded messages from Japan to the Japanese Embassy in Washington. It also shows how the American officials didn't head the warning signals. But the most fascinating aspect of the movie was the Japanese side which shows that first, they really didn't want a war with the U.S., and then when they new that they must go to war with America, they had to win it quickly or they would not be able to keep up with the American production capabilities.

This movie had two directors, one for the American scenes and one for the Japanese scenes. I have never heard of a movie that had two directors for two completely different parts of the same film. Richard Fleischer (Red Sonja) directed the American scenes and Kinji Fukasaku directed the Japanese scenes and they did such a splendid job that you can't tell that there were two directors. The movie was nominated for five Academy Awards and won the Best Visual Effects award.

This movie was so influential that a latter war movie, Midway, stole many scenes from this movie as special effects. The sets were very realistic in that it appears that every plane in the movie is flyable yet there were only about 10 actual planes that could fly and this was before computers so they did a magnificent job with the effects, cinematography and so on. The effects are just first rate for 1970.

As I said earlier, Jason Robards is the only real recognizable actor for my generation any way. His part was fairly small, very important as General Short, but not in a lot of scenes. E. G. Marshall (Absolute Power) was also in the movie as one of the intelligent officers, Lt. Col. Bratten, and he was fun to watch. Also worthy of mentioning was Soh Yamamura (Gung Ho) as Admiral Yamamoto who was quite good.

This movie should be geared toward the audience that wants to learn about the events that surrounded the attack in Pearl Harbor and America's entrance into World War II. The phrase Tora,Tora, Tora, was the Japanese code that the Japanese pilots used to signal to their command ships that surprise had been achieved. If you are looking for entertainment value as well as some, but not much, education value, then watch the 2000 movie Pearl Harbor. But if you want to actually learn something without reading a book, and watch some amazing special effects for its time, then this is your movie.

Brian - the Naked Gun