The Movie: Tora! Tora! Tora!, if you haven't heard of it already, is one of the many, many films with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as its subject, and I think so far out of the ones I've seen, it's the best. The story focuses on the Japanese preparation for the attack and the series of political-type blunders on the American side that led to the surprise attack being possible. No cheesy love story, no cheesy computer generated effects.

Perhaps one of my favorite aspects of this film is the fact that there was virtually a completely separate production team for the Japanese segments of the film, with Japanese directors, all in Japanese with subtitles. I guess I'm just really sick of films that feel the need to have foreigners speak with bad accents on screen when their characters would actually be speaking to each other in their native language. Especially when they do something cheesy like make all the Germans speak with English accents. There are no Germans in this film, however, and none of those cheesy antics.

Despite the fact that the outcome of the film is already known (as it is a well-known historical incident), Tora! Tora! Tora! manages to build up a strong sense of tension and urgency as the pieces of the mounting attack fall into place, and the depiction of the actual attack is quite intense.

There are quite a few incredible special "effects", though I put "effects" in quotes as this film was released in 1970 -- before the advent of computer generated images taking over special effects. Many of the things they blew up in the making of this film were life size, and even life threatening. I'd be surprised if a few people didn't get seriously injured in the making of this film as there are things just exploding EVERYWHERE with people in very close proximity.

Indeed, there was one particular explosion which seemed to put the stuntmen in serious danger, and apparently it wasn't just an "effect" -- according to IMDB, " the explosion occurred in a location the stunt men weren't prepared for. When it looks like they were running for their lives, they really were." Holy crap!

Apparently this film didn't do too well in its original release, as people felt its depiction of events from both points of view was too anti-American, but I think it seemed pretty fairly balanced to me. And with the action sequences being so... well, real, I've got to rate this as the best Pearl Harbor movie I've ever seen. Check it out, if you haven't already!

The DVD: On the technical side of things, I have to start off by saying that this is by far the worst video transfer I've ever seen receive the THX seal of approval. It was quite murky, with crushed blacks, poor contrast, and way too much edge enhancement which just ended up causing "ringing" artifacts and exacerbating the grain of the film.

The 4.1 audio (yeah, that's a "4" haha) was quite a bit better than the video, as it was cleaner and crisper than you'd expect from a film of this vintage, with a surround field that is not too intrusive and doesn't really call too much attention to itself.

Special features include a new featurette, an audio commentary track, and the original theatrical trailer. Overall, this DVD doesn't quite live up to the scope of the film, but the quality of the movie itself makes it more than worth checking out anyway.