Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

Written by Per Gunnar Jonsson on April 21, 2018

I remember viewing this film as a kid shortly after it came out in Sweden. At that time I was not impressed. I was expecting an action filled war movie and what I got was a boring movie where the good guys got beaten up at the end. I do not think I even new anything about the real events in Pearl Harbor at the time.

Naturally I view this movie in a somewhat different light and now and when re-watching it yesterday evening I enjoyed it quite a lot. I cannot help but wondering at the historical accuracy though. If someone would have told me that this was nothing but a Hollywood script, and a predictable at that, I would probably not have doubted it.

Did all these blunders really take place? That the Japanese where not playing with all their cards on the table is clear but there where so many screw-ups all over the place. Sightings not being reported, communications a mess everywhere, people asking for confirmations in absurdum, lining up the planes like ducks on a shooting range etc. etc. If this is really what happened then some of those movie scripts that seems so ridiculous maybe are not as ridiculous as one might think?

Naturally the film has the drawback of being predictable. What else can you expect when it is supposed to depict actual, well known, events? I think I would have felt that it was predictable even if I did not know what was supposed to happen though. Even so it is an enjoyable, well done, movie as far as I am concerned.