The film retells of the Pearl Harbor attack details everything in the days that led up to that tragic moment in American history as well as the series of American blunders that allowed it to happen.
As history, it seems a fairly accurate account of what happened, although it never much bothers its head about why. As film art, it is nothing less than a $25-million irrelevancy.
7M Pictures
December 20, 2011
an interesting footnote in cinema history... though it's no less propaganda than the flag wavers from the 1940s
Prior to "Tora!" movies showing the attack were jingoistic propaganda; afterwards, the attack was an excuse to indulge in Hollywood's fascination with American self-loathing.
The climax, in particular, manages to be more than just a shoot-out, with Fleischer's intelligent direction generating a real feeling of chaos and apocalypse.
Directors Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, and Toshio Masuda have infused Tora! Tora! Tora! with an excessively dry and deliberate pace that results in an almost interminable first hour...
Strictly for history buffs only, because it presents the story in the most dry way possible. It's like a History Channel re-enactment with all of the right aircraft carriers and airplanes.
Both overall director Richard Fleischer and his Japanese counterparts do a dull job, and the monotonously low-key tone of scene after scene almost suggests that each was filmed without a sense of ultimate slotting in the finished form.
