Tora! Tora! Tora!

great war movie and is historically accurate unlike some more recent Hollywood war films Blu-Ray quality is great considering it is a 1970 film lots of big name actors of the day star in this film

What a film, first picture quality and sound brlliant, the fact you get the american and the japanese version even better, the japanese one adds more footage. What a story, a movie that almost bankrupted the studio because the producer and director would not be told how to make it, they wanted it to be truthful showing all the mistakes that were made, like dominoes they all fell. The acting is wonderful especially I feel the japanese, considering at the time the war was still in peoples minds and hearts. The japanese director brought the intensity and the stiffness of there government to the screen in a believable show of force. The scenes around hawaii are breathtaking especially when the planes come over, you cna imagine how people must have felt. The mistakes made by all is amazing and this film puts them there right on the screen from the high admiralty to the officers on the ground, from ignoring conversations between high japanese officials to being more paranoid about local hawaiian residents trying to destroy the planes that the actual japanese military, they moved the planes into groups together instead of spread out across the fields, hence it made a better target for the bombers to hit them. You see how people trying to advise there superiors tried to get there point across warning of the dangers but being ignored. many mistakes happened. Thats whats great about this film not only does it entertain you it informs you without being held back by studio execs. The sounds of the planes and the gunfire really bring it home on this bluray especially if you have any type of sound system to enjoy it.

A very good watchable film. You do have to watch mind because one side is speaking Japanese so you have to read the subtitles although subtitles in white when most of the conversation is between officers wearing white makes it challenging :). Refreshing to see an American film where it depicts serious errors on the US side and many inept US officers and politicians and the disastrous effects of those decisions rather than the norm of 3 US Navy seals saving the day at the last minute albeit being a true depiction and the historical disastrous consequences that would be hard. Seems most likely to be far nearer a true depiction of probably what did happen in truth than other films on the subject. A very good film.

A classic. Well worth a watch

20th Century Fox's genuinely spectacular account of the attack on Pearl Harbor told from both the American and Japanese viewpoints was possibly in real terms an even bigger financial disaster for the studio than Cleopatra: even by latter-period roadshow standards, reminding American audiences of the incredible catalogue of blunders and incompetence that led to the Day of Infamy at a time when they were in the midst of another war in Asia (and one that was not going well) seems like business decision making at its most kamikaze. The film has probably made more money out of being carved up for stock footage than it ever did in the cinema, featuring prominently in Midway, Pearl, Australia, the TV version of From Here To Eternity and both The Winds of War and War and Remembrance among others. Like Cleopatra, it was a troubled production: Akira Kurosawa worked on the Japanese side of the film for months but delivered only one brief scene in the finished film before being replaced by two more special effects friendly directors (Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku) while on the American side Richard Fleischer relied on Ray Kellog and Robert Enrietto to shoot much of the spectacular finale. To add to their woes, several politicians complained about the use of Naval and military personnel and the aircraft carrier Yorktown in the film, one even going so far as to try to get a change in the law to prevent filmmakers being allowed to use them in the future, with the studio having to take out adverts in newspapers during filming to reassure the public the film wasn't anti-American but a reminder of the need for constant vigilance. The critics weren't kind and, to cap it all, the film's losses led to studio head Richard D. Zanuck being fired by his own father Darryl F. Zanuck, who would in turn be forced out of the studio a few months later. From the last days when films were consciously visually designed for the Scope screen, it is mounted on a scale that would be inconceivable today - what Pearl Harbor did with CGi it did with real ships and aircraft - with a tight, focused script that dispenses with fictional sub-plots (no Ben Affleck winning the Battle of Britain single-handed here) in favour of absolute historical accuracy. Seen entirely from the military and political mindset, it has the edge on most cinematic exercises in battlefield history through the conviction of its direction, particularly the visually impressive Japanese sequences, and of its playing. With the exception of Soh Yamamura and E.G. Marshall, most of the top-liners are barely in the film, but the large ensemble cast copes surprisingly well with the task of having to embody attitudes and impart information rather than working on clearly defined characters, adding the colour as they find it in the gaps. Perhaps most surprising is the incredible degree of tension the film manages to achieve in the run-up to the attack despite the inevitability of the outcome. When it finally comes, the special effects are among the best ever seen on the screen. Jerry Goldsmith's score is also a major plus, relentlessly building menace and tension as the film races toward the inevitable. While the previous DVD issue was pretty threadbare, the Cinema Reserve edition has a number of features covering both the making of the film and the real attack itself, although a 20-minute featurette from the first US DVD release but dropped from the original PAL release, Day of Infamy, has still not been included (it can be found on the US two-disc version, however). Fox's Region A, B and C Blu-Ray offers both the 145-minute US version and the 149-minute Japanese version, which gives the main directorial credit to Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku and adds two scenes that really should have stayed in the international version: one a very solemn sequence where a minister prepares Admiral Yamamoto for a ritual meeting with the Emperor about the impending war all too aware that both men opposed it and are reluctant to fulfil their ceremonial roles while another features two Japanese galley cooks talking about crossing the international date line, the consequences of which only became clear in the aftermath of the attack. It also features all the extras from the two-disc DVD, including the Richard Fleischer/Stuart Galbreith audio commentary that isn't mentioned on the packaging and the historical featurette Day of Infamy that wasn't included on the international DVD releases as well as 91-minute and 22-minute documentaries on the making of the film, 10 Movietone newsreel extracts dealing with the attack and its aftermath, stills galleries and a fullframe theatrical trailer. It's easily the best home video presentation of the film to date.

A very under-rated film. I saw this many years ago when I was a child but didn't really appreciate how good it was till watching it again about 10 years ago. I recently purchased it on DVD. It gives a very good account of the lead up to Pearl harbour from both US and Japanese perspectives. Excellent performances and superbly made. Completely faultless in my opinion

Great to see some of the real aircraft flogging sequences and the film is better than some modern versions of this historical event.

I purchased this to replace the DVD copy I already owned, which in turn had replaced a video copy, and was delighted to see some extra footage had been included. However, on viewing the film I was very disappointed with the quality of the picture. It was visibly "fizzy", and in fact, having then compared it with the DVD copy, it is not as good! Had it not been for the extra length (about 10 mins, in all), I would have returned it as "not fit for purpose". I assumed that the film being as old as it is, (1970),was not filmed with hi-definition equipment, at least not hi-enough! Or maybe I was being naive, and perhaps I'd just got a crap copy(?). However, a week or so later I purchased a Blu-ray copy of "War of the Worlds" (the 2005 version, with Tom Cruise)through Amazon, and it was just the same. Which tells me it is nothing to do with the age of the film! Anybody else had this problem? Incidentally there's nothing wrong with my Blu-ray player, as it plays shop-bought Blu-rays perfectly well. As far as the film itself is concerned, it is excellent, worth 5-stars of anybody's money. Far,far better than the much later "Pearl Harbor", which only benefited from CGI special effects, and in no other way matched up to this one. In fact, the live action attack on the airfield is considerably better, and more realistic than the later CGI version. Done almost in a drama-documentary style, it tells both sides of the story, the American and Japanese, and has rather less of the "gung-ho" acting, although many big-name stars of the time are in it, some with relatively minor roles. To sum up: Nice film, shame about the "fuzz"!

Lo steelbook in se è esteticamente uno dei più belli tra quelli che ho nella mia collezione. Basti pensare alla scritta sovra impressa del titolo ed alla tinta metallizzata usata per effigiare evocativamente il sol levante. Il film è una lezione di storia su un decisivo episodio della Grande Guerra, lezione che deve essere ben imparata è tenuta a mente. Per gli appassionati di tale periodo storico, risulta un documento straordinariamente utile. Per i non appassionati, varrebbe, sempre il detto "historia magistra vitae"...e comunque rimane un bel film. La qualità tecnica di questo bluray è di ottima levatura. Audio non multidimensionale ma comunque bello pieno e di corpo. Colori molto belli. Unico appunto da fare al confezionamento, invero deprecabile è il seguente: a parte il disco, nella confezione manca persino la classica sovracopertina in cartone recante le varie info base del film e del bluray (che io, per gli altri steelbook, sono solito piegare in due e conservare nell'apposito spazio interno). Per Sat 64 - si certo la sciena di intermezzo è costituita solo da schermo nero con colonna sonora. Mi dispiace che tu gli abbia dato solo 3 stelle!

Great grand picture...I do not think we will ever have such movies produced in the future ! Great movie to watch ! keep the little children away...due to heavy war in Pearl Harbor.

Bellissimo film visto quando avevo solo 14 anni ,ho voluto rivederlo anche perché ora ho una maggiore consapevolezza storica ed il film è molto aderente ai fatti storici.

歴史的事実を忠実に再現している。戦争の善悪を論じるのではなく、歴史的事実を学ぶにはとても良い映画である。

Sad but oh so true