Tora! Tora! Tora!

Tora! Tora! Tora! is a commendable attempt at a historically accurate, unheroic depiction of the events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The film thus portrays both sides. Its attempt to keep things even-handed is also reflected in its remarkable production arrangements, with Hollywood naturally handling the American scenes while the Japanese shot the Japanese part. This means that the Japanese get to speak Japanese rather than broken English, which undeniably adds to the realism.

The characters are somewhat stock, however, and names and titles are bandied about so freely that you cannot avoid getting a little confused, depending on how much you already know about the history. No single character serves as a point of identification, so this is not a traditional human drama. Then again, that is clearly not the film's intention either. Instead we get an objective and sober account which, among other things, reveals a good many errors and shortcomings in the Americans' internal communications - and even more errors in the version of events presented in the blockbuster hit "Pearl Harbor".