Highly Overrated But Still Good

Awesome Movie

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

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.)

This war Robinsonade is a quirky poem and a psychological essay, not of an unusual or twisted psychology, on the contrary, a raw one, the two actors were carefully chosen as types of ordinary guys, Mifune and Marvin, both awesome, with Mifune being the superior actor; it reminded me of Russian war movies, the Expressionism exchanged for '60s _avant-gardism and fanciness, where the playfulness, coldness and irony enhance the beauty and the absurd, the two styles resemble in some heartfelt sympathy, yet Boorman reveals a hopelessness and sense of dread and of the absurd. Think of it as of a poem, also because of its masterful unity.Two soldiers torture each other, then cook, then set up a raft and, toilers of the sea, leave the island, towards a larger world unable, unprepared to contain their comradeship, which was uncertain and shaky to begin with, and, born on a wild shore, breaks in the ruins of societal life. They rediscover comfort in a ruined military base on another island: cigars, a magazine, sake. But they drink too much. The drink, the magazine are enough to dispel their newfound, unlikely and strategic unity. They rejoice in the things they find, but foolishly, vainly.The '60s were eager for this naked psychology.They don't know each other's name. Sometimes, their relationship has the abrupt and dizzy quality, with sudden changes and outbursts, found in the '60s and '70s cinema inspired by the stage. Which on stage can look convincing and maybe lifelike, but in a movie looks abrupt, silly and almost contrived.The island, their 1st island, which they leave, is in itself Paradise, and the director is very aware of this pristine beauty.

Excellent film. Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune find themselves alone on a deserted Pacific island. The first represents USA & West, and the other Japan & Orient. First they are in conflict then they realize they must together find their way out of the island. To do so, they need to overcome cultural and language differences... There are some splendid and funny situations. Beautiful nature offered plenty of beautiful shots. Anyway, this story is about Pacific war, how it started, how it ended, what would happen after the war. But disturbing ending shows us eternal damnation of humankind.(you can find somewhere alternative ending but it is pretty the same).

Hell in the Pacific (1968)A great concept--two men are lost together on an island in the Pacific. The war is over, but prejudices remain, and one man is Japanese, one American. They don't share a language, so there is basically no dialog. There is only survival.How do you make a feature length movie about this without stretching the idea thin, without boring the viewer, without resorting to clichés of makeshift boats and coconut to eat? You don't. The movie is ambitious over very little, and if it seems impressive in some isolated, focused way, it is still a slow go.And you kind of know what the progression of events is going to be, as common human needs rise above nationalist myopia. What keeps it afloat at all is the odd combination of the quirky boorish stereotype American thug, Lee Marvin, who is not his best in this situation (but who has his own following--I like him in his crime films a lot) and the most famous Japanese actor of the period, the Kurosawa standard bearer Toshiro Mifune (who is an archetype of the vigorous, smart Japanese male).I have to admit I didn't really like the most recent parallel production, "Castaway," at least not the island parts (which everyone I know loved). In all these cases you depend on the acting, the actors themselves, to make it special. And for some that might be enough. It's a unique movie, for sure, a kind of old Hollywood hanger-on in the new Hollywood era. John Boorman had just finished the remarkable "Point Blank" with Marvin, and would soon work on "Deliverance," and all three have a masculine quality of rising about a hostile world and making it on your own terms.Finally, if you do get through it all, the last five minutes is important--clumsy and improbable and sensationalist after all that preceded, but important. It tries at last to talk about the difficulty of really understanding someone else, personally and culturally, and about the madness and indifference of war. It's 1968, after all.