Claysaba
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Francene Odetta
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
gavin6942
During World War II, an American pilot and a marooned Japanese navy captain are deserted on a small uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean. There, they must cease their hostility and cooperate if they want to survive, but will they? Apparently this film was a flop when it first came out and lost the company a good deal of money. That is understandable. In many ways, the film is unconventional, and frankly American audiences prefer convention. Things like dialogue, for example, which this film has very little of.It is also not surprising that as the years go on, respect for the film goes up. Because even if it lacks commercial appeal, it is a darn fine movie and quite artistic. I am not sure how well Toshiro Mifune was known in the States at this point, but having him in the picture is a big deal. (Again, this might be one of those retrospect things, now that we generally consider Kurosawa one of the best directors.)
grantss
Interesting and profound.Very interesting movie, with a great moral message. Builds slowly, if anything to show the gap that has to be bridged between the two characters. Ultimately they discover that peace and co-operation are more constructive than war and strife - surely a code to live by.Solid direction by John Boorman (who also directed Deliverance and Excalibur, among others), to go with the excellent plot. Good performances by Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, in one of the smallest casts ever (though there have been movies with a cast of one)...
AaronCapenBanner
Lee Marvin & Toshiro Mifune play a downed World War II pilot and a Navy Commander who are stranded on a Pacific island during the war. Both men of course distrust and hate each other, trying desperately to survive and thwart the enemy. As time passes, they find that, if they plan to survive, they will have to come to some sort of a truce. They both have times when they captured the other, but did not kill, which teaches them to begin to get along.Interesting, well acted and directed(John Boorman) film is highly allegorical, that is both men represent two superpowers who can either learn to get along, or kill each other. The ending will either come as a bitter irony, or a misstep, though I lean toward irony; either way, it is memorable.
poe426
War is Hell, they tell us (but only when you're on the receiving end...). Boorman's minimalist masterpiece, fully realized with the aid of three of the Art's finest (Mifune, Marvin, and Hall), stands the test of Time. Its message is as clear and as valid today as it was then. Even vastly inferior fare, like the SF feature ENEMY MINE, would go on to "re-imagine" HELL IN THE PACIFIC- though I don't recall the filmmakers giving credit where credit was due at the time of that movie's release (shades of THE TERMINATOR!). Mifune and Marvin make for a marvelous mix, and Conrad Hall's eye for detail is (as it always was, throughout his entire career) unmatched. The alternate ending (which I'd heard about, but have never seen) sounds interesting, but I'd always assumed that Boorman's original ending was even darker: I thought it might've been a drunken hand-to-hand struggle to the death between the two men, in which they both die(d). Either way, HELL IN THE PACIFIC is one of the truly Great Ones. Don't miss it.
