Best movies about the Pacific War?

[rockmedic109]

ORIGINAL: Sauvequipeut

'The Long and the Short and the Tall' - great study of of a patrol lost in Burma. 'Flingers on Blonce!'

'The Seawolves' - who needs fiction when fact has things like this?

wasn't Ensign Pulver a war picture too?

Well, kind of, but...what makes Mister Roberts so special is the depiction of the USS Reluctant as being part of the war, but not really 'in' it - the crew face years of inglorious, soul-destroying tedium with the reward being a lifetime of fearing the question 'What did YOU do in the war, Daddy?'.

Ensign Pulver is just common-or-garden cheesy nautical slapstick - they could have put that one in the 30's or 50's without changing a thing.

I forgot Seawolves. And the older I get, the more I like movies where old guys kick a**.

[lazydawg]

Another movie for the list:

'No Man is an Island'

This movie seems to have totally disappeared. I probably haven't seen it since the late 60's.

[Skyros]

ORIGINAL: sfbaytf
One book I'd like to mention is "The Campaign for Guadacanal" by Jack Coggins. He has other fine books I also have. Its out of print and not easily available, but if you do some searching online you should be able to get it.

Great book read it in high school back in the 70s and it had all the info you needed to set up naval miniature battles. Picked it up a few months ago in a used book store. A great reference piece.

[terje439]

+1 for "Otoka-tachi no Yamato"
Maybe not a movie about the WitP per se, but absolutely a great story about the Yamato in her final days.

[donkuchi19]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

 
/finished his walk


If I could make a movie, any movie, it would be a remake of Star Wars (the new hope)... from the other side.

I would make it about the "dude that pulled the trigger that blew Alderran apart", coupled with a story about Darth Vader's wingman in their Tie fighters, make it about "the stormtrooper that bonked his head on the ceiling when chasing Ham Salad", add the story about the "look sir, droids" stormtrooper, have Admiral Thrawn be one of the main characters... etc. etc. etc.

But BEST war movie?

Saving Private Ryan, Stalingrad, The Winter War, Das Boot, Tora Tora Tora

They wrote a book about it. It is called Death Star. It is actually a pretty good read.

[davidjruss]

Operation Petticoat [;)]

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: Unhappy

Hasn't anybody mentioned The Final Countdown?  Oh Kirk Douglas, if only you'd averted that whole Pearl Harbor thing when you had the chance!

Douglas was more believable -- not to mention menacing -- starring "In Harms Way," a fictionl flic but w/good drama and realistic naval action at the end.

[StoneAge]

Merrill's Marauders (1962)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056234/

[Flying Tiger]

funny thing really. I was watching 'the movie' (yeah, Pearl Harbour') a few weeks back with my wife (while i was waiting for AE to be released). Of course I was mocking and ridiculing mercilessly about the historical inacuracies, etc - finally she paused the movie and said (dialogue below):


wife: "so the Japanese didnt really attack Pearl harbor?"
me: "oh yeah, that bits true"
wife:, "but it was not a surprise?"
me: "yeah, thats true too"
wife: "so they didnt actually sink any ships?"
me: "no, they sank all those ships"
wife: "but no planes got hit?"
me: "oh yeah, planes got hit?"
etc
etc
etc
etc
wife: "but thats not how America got in the war?"
me: "ummm. yeah, thats true too"
wife: "soooo...it's the details then?"
me: "yeah, the details!"
wife: "so the black guy didnt actually shoot down a japanese plane?"
me: "oh, thats true"
wife: "so the guys were not trapped in that ship?'
me: "errrrrrr. actually, thats true too"
wife: "but the Americans never used those big bomber planes on the aircraft carrier to bomb Japan?"
me: "ummmm. thats true too"
wife: "well..... what then??"
me: "well. Where do i start? Ok, that guy, Ben Affleck, he was a fighter pilot in the UK, suddenly he's a bomber pilot. Thats ridiculous! And before, when they were flying the fighters, and that guy shot the plane with a shotgun, thats just stupid, and...."
wife: with an unimpressed stare. "you know what, you're a freak! You and you're 'detail' obsession! It's a movie! Now shut up and enjoy it!"

hmmmm... point taken.

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: stuman

ORIGINAL: rroberson

I think there was a pretty good Ben Afleck movie a couple years ago...


[8D]

Arrrggghh. We should not even allude to The Movie That Shall Not Be Named ( TMTSNBN )

That movie did to history what Col Sanders does to chicken!
Everybody involved in that waste of film and time should be removed from the shores of the U.S., and be required to wear skirts for 2 years...(No smiley face for those degenerates intended.)

[Tazo]

Most of the mentioned movies are interesting, especially old ones.
Many thanks for mentionning some that I didn't know, I will certainly look for them soon.

Among the more modern ones, Tora Tora Tora is very good, the complete opposite of the amazingly stupid PH - I managed to never see Titanic, I however tried PH because of the subject... and I felt as if I was eventually watching Titanic.

But I should admit that I like very much "La ligne Rouge" - not to mention it in english and hurt some of you guys.
The Malick's movie is of course not an air/surface movie and speaks beyond the Guadalcanal battle about the impact of war on human behaviors, nothing against the necessary Pacific war itself or the US army but just this specific human condition absurdity. The feeling of the combat sounds almost true, and the points of view depending of the rank and decision level also makes sense - hey quite often we are sending LCUs to death, right ? Even if the movie team was engaged against the Iraki war - a citizen right I'm also using in my country - at least the message of this movie is not this one at all. Since it is not an heroic story, or an historical movie, on the Pacific war, in that sense I admit that it could be out of the subject here, but not really a TMTSNBN. So putting PH and TTRL in the same category makes little sense to me.

Since Woody mentioned it early in the thread, I guess it is part of the french taste.

About Books I really appreciated reading John Costello's "The Pacific War" when starting WitP, my recommanded lecture for all newbies on AE to handle the GC with some self contained strategic and operational description from the US side at hand.

TZ

[jazman]

I don't want to provoke to envy, but I haven't seen the Ben Affleck disaster. I am blissfully ignorant. From the sounds of it, not seeing it is the equivalent of seeing five good movies.

[NightFlyer]

One of my favorite movie review sites, Rotten Tomatoes (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/) gave "La ligne Rouge" 78%. I'm not sure what the angst is all about. The movie is based on a classic WWII novel by James Jones. I thought the cinematography and writing was great but maybe Terrence Malick movies aren't for everyone. They aren't full of clichés, e.g. like the Duke taking out Iwo Jima single handedly

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: Lützow

How about Letters from Iwo Jima ?

Canoerebel mentioned it, but I am surprised that it wasn't mentioned more. I think this is the best, anyone who hasn't seen it should.

A quality Midway remake would be very welcome, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Lomri]

To add to the list of "don't let your wife trick you into thinking this is a WWII movie" - the recent movie Australia. The previews show zero's flying around strafing. Seems nifty. But it's a very long movie with very little WWII stuff involved. They don't frequently show dates, which is good because when they did they were completely divorced from reality. A party banner had the date, 1939, and soon there-after showed a clip of an old black and white "Germany and Japan are taking over the world" movies - with the warning "Japan threatens Australia!". In 1939.

Movie takes place around Darwin.

[SteveD64]

My father was in the 2nd Marine division so I went looking for "With the Marines at Tarawa" and it turns out to be in the public domain and a free download.
 
http://www.archive.org/details/WiththeMarinesatTarawa
 
 

[Templer_12]

ORIGINAL: Flying Tiger

funny thing really. I was watching 'the movie' (yeah, Pearl Harbour') a few weeks back with my wife (while i was waiting for AE to be released). Of course I was mocking and ridiculing mercilessly about the historical inacuracies, etc - finally she paused the movie and said (dialogue below):


wife: "so the Japanese didnt really attack Pearl harbor?"
me: "oh yeah, that bits true"
wife:, "but it was not a surprise?"
me: "yeah, thats true too"
wife: "so they didnt actually sink any ships?"
me: "no, they sank all those ships"
wife: "but no planes got hit?"
me: "oh yeah, planes got hit?"
etc
etc
etc
etc
wife: "but thats not how America got in the war?"
me: "ummm. yeah, thats true too"
wife: "soooo...it's the details then?"
me: "yeah, the details!"
wife: "so the black guy didnt actually shoot down a japanese plane?"
me: "oh, thats true"
wife: "so the guys were not trapped in that ship?'
me: "errrrrrr. actually, thats true too"
wife: "but the Americans never used those big bomber planes on the aircraft carrier to bomb Japan?"
me: "ummmm. thats true too"
wife: "well..... what then??"
me: "well. Where do i start? Ok, that guy, Ben Affleck, he was a fighter pilot in the UK, suddenly he's a bomber pilot. Thats ridiculous! And before, when they were flying the fighters, and that guy shot the plane with a shotgun, thats just stupid, and...."
wife: with an unimpressed stare. "you know what, you're a freak! You and you're 'detail' obsession! It's a movie! Now shut up and enjoy it!"

hmmmm... point taken.

Welcome in the club.
You wife must be the lost sister of one of my girlfriends.
With deep sadness, my sympathy.

[AcePylut]

Oh man, you should have ripped her on the "romance" angle..
 
So here's this chick that meets a guy, falls in love but he loves planes more, so he leaves her and overseas to the UK, get shot down and "lost", only to come back to Pearl a month later and discover his uber-slut girlfriend ('member, we're talking 1940's era morals here) is banging her "dead boyfriends" best friend and gets pregnant.
 
My summation of that "romance plot" at the end of the movie finally convinced my (ex) wife how terrible the movie was, because all the technical detail rants were in and out of her ear.

[pmelheck1]

I enjoy run silent, run deep.  Another early WW2 movie so it's very loose with names and facts similar to in harms way.  But still enjoyable.  One has to wonder if the memories were still a bit to fresh to use real names and places or if some the the info we take for granted today was still classified.  We should also remember some of these older movies were not necessarily about a specific event but rather  more akin to what the military calls war stories.

What's the difference between a fairy tail and a war story?  One starts out "Once upon a time" the other starts out "This ain't no bull"

[Templer_12]

Did you notice that you´ll find more good movies about the western theater?
How this?