Tora! Tora! Tora! Poster

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

Action | History 
Rayting:   7.5/10 31.9K votes
Country: Japan | USA
Language: English | Japanese
Release date: 15 October 1970

In 1941, following months of economic embargo, Japan prepares to open its war against the USA with a preventive strike on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor.

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User Reviews

j-d--1 13 August 2005

In pure movie terms, this film is pretty light. As a historical drama it is almost perfect. Based on Gordon Prange's book of the same name, the film draws on Prange's 30 years of official USN research to draw some interesting and thought-provoking questions about the mistakes made by both sides in the lead up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

For the history buffs it even raises some questions which are not part of most people's understanding of how and why it happened the way it did. For the general public it puts all the basic points of the attack into one neat, interesting package. Some characters have been combined and events changed slightly to aid production but nothing of any real significance is altered.

The Japanese sequences were originally intended to be directed by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa but when the producers realised that those parts alone made up four hours of screen time, the trouble started and Kurosawa was replaced. The acting is solid but unremarkable, as one would expect from a film of this type.

The battle sequences are, for the most part, beautifully done. The producers spent cubic dollars converting old trainers to look like Japanese fighter and attack aircraft and succeeded brilliantly. Only the real oficianados can tell them apart. The flying is fantastic and it looks brilliant against the Hawaiian scenery.

About the only thing missing, and probably a salient reason for its lack of real commercial penetration, was the lack of a love angle.

By contrast, it is amazing to me that "Pearl Harbor", made some 30 years later, was so bad in comparison. Had the producers actually watched this film before making such a turkey, they might have actually learned something. "Tora, Tora, Tora!" is a film which could be shown to any history class with few concerns as to its authenticity. "Pearl Harbor" should never be shown again.

Considering the amount of information which had to be conveyed in such a small amount of screen time, "Tora, Tora, Tora!" is remarkably successful.

grahamsj3 7 February 2005

Fmovies: This film tells the story of the attack by the Japanese Navy on an unsuspecting Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The film is balanced insofar as it's perspective, being told from both the Japanese and American sides. The storyline begins pretty much with the decision by the Japanese government that, unless negotiations with the United States were to take a decidedly different direction, there would be no choice but to go to war. It then follows the planning of the attack by Admiral Yamamoto and his staff. Concurrently, it shows that the negotiations between the two countries was not going well at all (from the Japanese standpoint). Depicted are, sadly, the absolutely dreadful decisions made by the US Commanders at Pearl Harbor, the ignoring of evidence that an attack was imminent, the lack of coordination in communications that resulted in huge delays in receiving crucial information and, lastly, ignoring the incoming Japanese raiders after they were spotted on American radar on their way in. The actual bombing and combat footage is very well done. The acting is superb by the entire stellar cast. Overall, if you want to know how a tragic event came to be, this film will explain it. It is historically mostly correct, although some artistic license was taken, for sure. Overall, an excellent production!

Jetman525 25 April 2003

It never ceases to amaze me that people know as little as they do about their nation's past, even when Hollywood mostly propagates myths.

"Tora" does not mean "kill" in Japanese. It means "Tiger" (Prange, Gordon W.,"At Dawn We Slept", New York: Putnam, 1981.)

This movie was one of the better dramatizations of the Pearl Harbor debacle, focusing more on the miscommunications and errors in judgment shown by the military leadership in Hawaii. Also covered is the pure luck the Japanese First Air Fleet had. Left out, mostly because it had not yet become publicly available, was the information that the White House, the State Department, and the upper echelons of the military kept from Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short. Both of these men were made scapegoats for failing to protect their commands from attack, while being deprived of the information they really needed to do so. (Stinnett, Robert B. "Day of Deceit", New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.)

Still, this is a vastly better movie than the recent farce made by Michael Bay. It was no more an accurate portrayal of Pearl Harbor than Ghostbusters was factual.

jlpicard1701E 21 July 2004

Tora! Tora! Tora! fmovies. Some of you younger movie-goers, may only know of "Pearl Harbor".

Forget it!

If you want to have the actual story of what "really" happened on December 1941, then you have to go back to this movie made in 1970.

"Tora! Tora! Tora!" is a vision from both sides of the coin, not just the American one.

"Pearl Harbor" is more a love story in its context and has only one vision, the unilateral and unnecessary patriotic American one. This is not history as it should be told.

"Tora! Tora! Tora!" was the codename given by the Japanese fleet to its carrier pilots to start the attack on Pearl Harbor.

This is far less a shooting war movie, than an actual historic recreation of facts happening on a certain month, week, day and moment in 1941.

Everything is told, from the bureaucracy involved (slow at that, as usual), to the actual military decisions on both sides and on the ground.

The attack, when it comes, is a majestic recreation that, once watched side by side with the actual documentary footage available, makes you realize that were it in black & white, one could not distinguish its differences. That's how accurate it is!

Expenses were not spared at all in doing this recreation. The aircraft used are all faithful reconstructions (a rarity!).

All the actors involved (American and Japanese) have played their roles with outmost accuracy and sense of drama.

The watcher is taken in and left wondering "what next", even if he already knows the story. Not a moment passes in boredom.

This is another fine movie I would recommend for schools and war museums.

It is a movie for thinkers, not warmungers, and it is certainly not one for those who always love to wave flags around.

In other words, this is history, told at its best.

Sargebri 18 February 2003

This is one of my favorite war films. What makes it so great is that just like "The Longest Day" this film looks at the events that led up to and during one of the most momentous moments in the history of not only this country, but Japan as well. I also loved the acting in it. Martin Balsam and Jason Robards should have been nominated for their performances as Admiral Kimmel and General Short, respectively. Also, I wonder how much different it would have been if Akira Kurosawa had directed the Japanese scenes as he originally was supposed to. I also wonder if the fact that it dealt with one of the darker chapters in American history had something to to with its poor box office showing on this side of the Pacific (ironically, it was a box office smash in Japan). However, it is still a great film and I especially loved it at the end when Yamamoto made his famous comment "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with terrible resolve." How right he was.

skallisjr 5 May 2005

I can review this from a different perspective: my father was a Coast Artillery officer in the U. S. Army stationed at Fort Kamehameha, abutting Hickam Field, when the attack took place. He had his family with him, so my mother, my sister, and I also were involved. I was pre-kindergarten at the time, but have a good memory. Naturally, I've read extensively about the attack since.

Speaking personally, the attack in the film sounded real, though our mother kept me and my sister inside for much of the attack (we had to go outside to get evacuated from our quarters).

But that aside: the film mirrors historic events closely. However, (possibly a minor spoiler or two follow) there were some little points that had been added for the audience's sake.

The MAGIC machine, which was breaking the Japanese PURPLE cipher, did not have to be explained to either officer, but one did, so the audience would get the drift of what was happening. (The actual machine was the greatest cryptological feat of World War II, greater than Enigma, because it was developed from scratch by Frank Rowlett under the direction of William Friedmann.) The film was based in large part from the books of Professor Gordon W. Prenge, an historian who specialized in Pearl Harbor. Prenge interviewed many of the principals in the action, on both sides, and became friends with several.

This is the best film on Pearl Harbor. I got tapes for my mother and sister, both of whom shared my reaction to it.

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