Tora! Tora! Tora! Tora! Tora! Tora!

The incredible attack on Pearl Harbor.

In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words use by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, covers the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which plunged America into the Second World War.

Martin Balsam Sô Yamamura Joseph Cotten Tatsuya Mihashi E.G. Marshall James Whitmore Takahiro Tamura Jason Robards Wesley Addy Shogo Shimada Frank Aletter Koreya Senda Leon Ames Junya Usami Richard Anderson Kazuo Kitamura Susumu Fujita Edward Andrews Bontarô Miake Neville Brand

Richard Fleischer Kinji Fukasaku Toshio Masuda

action drama adventure

144 mins   More details at IMDb / TMDb

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  • jgarron

    Review by jgarron ★★★

    I think the easiest way to break this film down is to first differentiate the two sides shown. Tora Tora Tora presents not only the American side of the attack on Pearl Harbor but also the Japanese side, and in doing so actually split the production the same way. This meant that the Japanese sequences had their own separate director and screenplay from the American side. This caused a huge contrast in how both sides and the movie are presented.

    The biggest difference I see between the Japanese segments and the American ones was simply that the Japanese actually seemed to have something resembling characters with emotion. You get to see the Japanese come the the creation of the attack…

  • J.W. Hendricks

    Review by J.W. Hendricks ★★★½

    The first half of Tora! Tora! Tora! is not a movie. It's a history lesson. We are bombarded with a dizzying amount of characters and dozens of scenes depicting the thrilling, electrifying, and incredibly exciting action of reading and sending documents.

    Okay, I'm sorry, but staying true to historical fact does not a good movie make. The first half of this film is very, vey boring. It is nothing more than military officials pondering to each other for an hour and a half. I wouldn't mind if it didn't feel like an endurance test. The dialogue's just not absorbing. Yes, the acting's good and it's interesting to see how things worked in the military, but it just feels like a…

  • Tom Prankerd

    Review by Tom Prankerd ★½

    Very boring on the whole. Some painstakingly recreated aerial sequences are wasted by lacklustre direction and the whole thing feels very dull and mechanical.

  • tipsfromchip

    Review by tipsfromchip ★★★★ 2

    Great visuals, action, and an evenhanded presentation of the events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  • Jonathan White

    Review by Jonathan White ★★★½ 2

    Tora! Tora! Tora!

    A film so important, so powerful, so explosive that it requires three exclamation marks!!!

    I remember the incredible advertising blitz around Tora! Tora! Tora! when I was a kid. It looked big. Epic big. I was a bit too young to see it theatrically. Throughout the years I always managed to miss it on TV.

    As the 70’s style opening credits rolled, I was rather cynical that the ‘true, accurate account of events’ were to be, in fact, true and accurate. I was just hoping that this wasn’t going to be over the top propaganda. Then I noticed that both the American and Japanese stars seemed to be getting equal billing, and that the Japanese segment had…

  • Lise

    Review by Lise ★★★½ 4

    Tora! Tora! Tora!, it is claimed, is very much a fact based account of the attack on Pearl Harbour as well as the preceding weeks. I certainly wish I were more studied in the area to determine the truth of that claim, or to the very least I wish I could identify the fictionalized aspects of the film.

    Tora! Tora! Tora! starts out a little slow only because it is introducing all of the players and relevant policies of the day. Once I understood that I could not possibly be required to remember everyone's name, I began to get into the film a little more. This is not a criticism, for history buffs will appreciate knowing who is who. It…

  • Josep Maria Sempere

    Review by Josep Maria Sempere ★★★★

    La demostración práctica de que no es necesario - nunca lo ha sido - un ordenador para crear efectos especiales que dejen con la boca abierta: rodada más de treinta años antes, con seis veces menos presupuesto y sin un solo plano CGI, deja en ridículo a la estrepitosa Pearl Harbor de Michael Bay, resultando además ser también una cinta bélica más que notable e históricamente bastante fiel.

  • Johnnyuma

    Review by Johnnyuma ★★★

    Saw this one at the Colony Theatre in White Plains, NY. Fall of 1970 with the neighborhood gang. Still watch it every time it's on TV, 40 years later.

  • Andrew Neill

    Review by Andrew Neill ★★★

    I enjoyed this film as while it was a heinous act of war it did explore the difficult decisions that had to made on both sides. The good thing and bad thing of this film is that there are no main characters, there are a lot of people with small parts. I found it hard to get engaged with the characters and the effects are very dated but I can see how powerful it would have been in 1970. Worth watching especially if you wanted more from Pearl Harbour than the Ben Affleck film.