This was such a good movie. I tend to avoid war films because I was in a war and I don't really need to be reminded of it, but this was so good I'm willing to grant it a permanent exception.In late 1941, Japanese admiral Yamamoto (So Yamamura) begins to coordinate personnel for an attack on the American naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in response to American embargoes. American intelligence is aware of the communications between Japanese high command discussing possible attack plans, but a series of small mistakes (the attack is believed to be coming on Nov 30 instead of Dec 7, the early warning radar is dismissed, the base commander orders all the planes brought to the center of the air field because he's concerned about sabotage instead of air strike, etc.) build to a cumulative disaster.
I was most struck by how much care was taken to show the Japanese perspective. A lot of WWII films just demonize the Axis powers with no regard to subtleties to ensure that America and/or Britain is viewed in the most favorable light. This film was at least half in Japanese (which was also nice) and tried very hard to put a historical, almost documentarian, feel on the events, sometimes at the expense of a story. You can really tell this was made much later after the attack at a time when people were more willing to criticize their government's handling of intelligence.
This won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects in 1971 and they still hold up extremely well. This is definitely a keeper.
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