Tora! Tora! Tora!
Tora! Tora! Tora! is a superb 1970 docudrama that reenacts the Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. A special DVD edition of the film was released on May 15, 2001, that includes an informative documentary titled Day of Infamy, which features archival footage accompanied by the commentary of four experts in military history. The DVD also permits you to watch Tora! Tora! Tora! while listening to a running conversation between Japanese film historian Stewart Galbraith and the film's director Richard Fleischer.
About half the film is from Japan's point of view, and the other half is from the U.S. point of view. Director Fleischer comments that essentially Tora! Tora! Tora! was shot as two separate films--the Japanese part was shot in Japan with Japanese crews and actors (speaking their lines in Japanese), while the American part was shot in the U.S. with American crews and actors (speaking their lines in English). Only two Japanese actors, playing the roles of diplomats, appear on camera with American actors.
On the DVD, Fleischer and Galbraith discuss how the Japanese part of the movie was originally under the direction of the internationally famous Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, Ikiru, The Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Kagemusha, Ran), but he was fired after only about two weeks of shooting. According to Fleischer, none of the footage Kurosawa shot was used in the final version of the film. I don't find any of this too surprising since Kurosawa was a visual poet, while the suits who were financially responsible for Tora! Tora! Tora! seemed to have wanted a more prosaic approach.
The American part of the film features no big-name stars, relying instead on character actors such as Jason Robards, Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, E.G. Marshall, and James Whitmore. The IMDb supplies the interesting bit of trivia that Jason Robards, who plays the role of Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short in the movie, was actually on Oahu on December 7, 1941.
The attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2400 Americans, wounded 1200 more, and destroyed or damaged much of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, while Japanese losses were extremely light. Some Americans believe Tora! Tora! Tora! glorifies the Japanese Navy and makes the Americans look like bumblers, but I think the movie is pretty even-handed. As the film ends, Admiral Yamamoto, the attack's mastermind, feels no sense of celebration as he broods, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."