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• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304293577
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,673 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "I Bombed Pearl Harbor" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Celebration of the Imperial Navy, June 28, 2000

By 

Jacek Lubecki (Colorado Springs, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Bombed Pearl Harbor (VHS Tape)

As promised in the title Suei Mastubayashi's "I bombed Pearl Harbor" tells a story of a Japanese torpedo-bomber navigator (played by Yosuke Natsuki) from the carrier "Hiryu." The film begins with the attack on Peal Harbor and ends with well-reconstructed sequences of the battle of Midway. The Japanese star Toshiro Mifune ("Hell in the Pacific") plays a secondary role of admiral Yamaguchi, commander of the ship. For the war buffs, the film contains decent sequences of naval aerial combat, reconstructed with some degree of detail and accuracy (the most prominent mistake in this respect is the showing of American naval torpedo bombers as two-engine craft). Otherwise, the story is totally conventional and includes all the clichés of a war film (a story of the navigator's love interest at home, etc). It reminds me the most of an almost contemporary German 1957 film "Der Stern von Afrika" (The Star of Africa). However, the value of viewing "I bombed Pearl Harbor" goes well beyond its aesthetic or "thrill" value. It is a probably a typical example of the Japanese big-budget war film production, which started as soon as stringent U.S. occupation-era restrictions placed on the content of Japanese films were removed. The film is aimed at Japanese audiences and gives an almost totally "patriotic" and pro-military treatment of the war. The film's director, Shuei Matsubayashi was an Imperial Navy's veteran, known for his "loyalty" and "wartime patriotism." It is because of his "patriotism" (I am quoting from his short biography provided by Internet Movie Database) that the Toho motion picture company entrusted Mastubayashi with directing big-budget war epics, which include 1957 "Sumbarine I-57 will not surrender" (the title is self-explanatory) and 1981 "The Grand Fleet" (a story of the sinking of the battleship "Yamato").

3.0 out of 5 stars Historically interesting, not all that entertaining, June 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: I Bombed Pearl Harbor (VHS Tape)

With the release of the new "Pearl Harbor" film, I was interested to see if there were any Japanese movies that told the Pearl Harbor story from their perspective. This is the major one. (The 1970 film "Tora! Tora! Tora!" also features Japanese-directed Japanese actors retelling part of their story.) First of all, the film is mainly interesting for historical reasons, rather than as entertainment. While big-budget in 1960, the effects are really quite cheesy compared to today's digital standards. Example: the clouds in the sky seemed particularly artificial. Also, the film case boasts that it holds the record for most ships destroyed per minute of film time, but all these boats are too obviously models (the Japanese WW2-era ships, as well as planes, laying on the bottom of the ocean). It was impressive that Eiji Tsuburaya (who also did the then-astounding miniature effects for the Godzilla movies) oversaw the building (and destroying) of entire fleets of ships and squadrons of planes, but it was really more intriguing for the model-building 14-year-old inside me than for the average movie goer. The dubbing is also rather stilted and flat. In addition, the storyline reeks of warfilm cliche, though the cliches have a Japanese tinge. The bloody bullet-ridden pilot flailing in his cockpit is Japanese and not the American you would see in an American war movie. But basic plot elements are the same: for instance, the soldier has to decide between going to war and staying with his girl. The girl in this case, however, is his mom. There are scenes of genuine tenderness and love between the soldier boy and his mother, but little chemistry between him and his new bride. When our hero is floating in the ocean, waiting to be rescued, an image of his mother appears before that of his wife. Indeed, he seems to have married the girl primarily to take care of dear old mom. (Contrast that with the new "Pearl Harbor" movie, wherein neither Ben Affleck's nor Josh Harnett's moms are even mentioned and only Harnett's dad is (briefly) seen.) Also, like in the Affleck movie, there is a lot of talk about duty and honor, but the Japanese in this film do not fight for their buddies or their country, but our of loyalty to their Emperor. (Nobody in Affleck's movie talked about taking a bullet for FDR.) A friend commented that he was surprised to see Japanese doing things like screaming "Banzai!" and bowing; if Japanese actors in an American film did this, the filmmmakers would have been accused of racism. There is also intriguing but opaque dialog from Admiral Yamaguchi, played by Toshiro Mifune. After the disaster at Midway, Yamaguchi stands on the bridge of a Japanese aircraft carrier, too badly damaged to be salvaged. He awaits the torpedoes the Japanese will use to sink their own ship, and rambles about regrets and mistakes. Is he talking about bad decisions made during the battle, which saw the sinking of the majority of Japan's carrier fleet, or was he talking more globally about Japan's role in World War II? It is unclear. Overall, "I Bombed Pearl Harbor" was mildly entertaining, but interesting mostly in that it was largely similar to American war movies, but with little flashes of Japanese culture throughout. As a final note, I should add that the title is deceptive; while the Affleck film goes from just before the Pearl Harbor attack (with that insufferable love story) to Doolittle's raid on Japan, "I Bombed Pearl Harbor" starts with the PH attack (which actually gets only 10 to 15 minutes of film time), with the second half concentrating on the fiasco of Midway. Doolittle's raid, a major psychological boost for the Americans, isn't even mentioned in IBPH.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I bombed Pearl Harbor and am proud of it, June 19, 2000

By 

Jacek Lubecki (Colorado Springs, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Bombed Pearl Harbor (VHS Tape)

As promised in the title Suei Mastubayashi's "I bombed Pearl Harbor" tells a story of a Japanese torpedo-bomber navigator (played by Yosuke Natsuki) from the carrier "Hiryu," beginning with the attack on Peal Harbor and ending with well-reconstructed sequences of the battle of Midway. The Japanese star Toshiro Mifune ("Hell in the Pacific") plays a secondary role of admiral Yamaguchi, commander of the ship. For the war buffs, the film contains decent sequences of naval aerial combat, reconstructed with some degree of detail and accuracy (the most prominent mistake in this respect is the showing of American naval torpedo bombers as two-engine craft). Otherwise, the story is totally conventional and includes all the clichés of a war film (a story of the navigator's love interest at home, etc). It reminds me the most of an almost contemporary German 1957 film "Der Stern von Afrika" (The Star of Africa). However, the value of viewing "I bombed Pearl Harbor" goes well beyond its aesthetic or "thrill" merit. It is a probably a typical example of the Japanese big-budget war film production, which started as soon as the stringent U.S. occupation-era restrictions placed on the content of Japanese films were removed. The film is aimed at Japanese audiences and gives an almost totally "patriotic" and pro-military treatment of the war. The film's director, Shuei Matsubayashi was an Imperial Navy's veteran, known for his "loyalty" and "wartime patriotism." It is because of his "patriotism" (I am quoting from his short biography provided by the Internet Movie Database) that the Toho motion picture company entrusted Mastubayashi with directing big-budget war epics, which include 1957 "Sumbarine I-57 will not surrender" (the title is self-explanatory) and 1981 "The Grand Fleet" (a story of the sinking of the battleship "Yamato"). The Japanese public obviously must have enjoyed the unapologetic story of Imperial Navy's triumphs and reverses. Significantly, in 1960 Japan was in a state of virtual civil war between the Socialist and pacifist left and the more or less authoritarian right, which wanted to partially re-militarize the country and push into a closer Cold War alliance with the United States. The Japanese anti-war cinema, represented by Masaki Kobayashi's trilogy "The Human Condition," was obviously more pro-left. The films like "I bombed Pearl Harbor" which portrayed a "noble" Japanese fight against the Americans, paradoxically, worked to the right's advantage by emphasizing the glory and thrill of war, patriotism, duty, hierarchy, loyalty and other "traditional" Japanese values for which the right stood. In this respect the German "Der Stern von Afrika" which portrays a totally "sanitized" version of war for the benefit of the German public (from the movie one cannot even tell who started the war, etc.) must have performed a similar function for the re-militarization of Germany (even though the film is more anti-war than "I bombed Pearl Harbor"). Politically, the Japanese right won the struggle across the board. On balance, I think that the movie is worth seeing as both a portrayal of war and a document of Japanese public memory of the war in the early 1960s.