Watch In Harm's Way For Free

A Major Disappointment

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Otto Preminger's opus of the Pearl Harbor disaster and its aftermath of the U.S. military's preparation for war with the Japanese is also a story of the lives of enlisted personnel, their families and relationships that parallel the Navy's operations in the western Pacific that kicks off World War II. John Wayne is the central figure in the story as Captain Rockwell Torrey, who is faulted for not pursuing and engaging the Japanese fleet, thereby reassigned to desk duty. Kirk Douglas, always edgy and intense, is embittered as a result of the death of his unfaithful wife, which has tragic consequences later in the film. Patricia Neal is Wayne's romantic interest and they are very appealing as middle-aged folk that have another chance at love after previous marital failures. Brandon De Wilde is Wayne's aloof Harvard-educated son who faults Wayne for abandoning him as a child. The film has many diverse emotional threads as the characters cope with the war and their own tenuous relationships, professional and personal. As with most Preminger films, this one has an excellent cast, although Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews have brief roles. Wayne redeems himself in a taught sea battle with Japanese destroyers, with very nice special effects. The film is a fine mix of military warfare, romance, tragedy, family estrangement and redemption.

A largely forgotten entry from 1965 this has now turned up on DVD and at Thrift-Shop prices had to be good for at least one viewing given the names involved. The 'best-selling' novel on which the screenplay was based has somehow eluded me unlike say, From Here To Eternity, The Young Lions, The Caine Mutiny, The Naked And The Dead, Battle Cry, etc but we mustn't begrudge Hollyood its flacks. It turns out to be fairly enjoyable and entertaining with Duke Wayne well up to heading a starry cast, some of whom - Franchot Tone, Hank Fonda, Burgess Meredith - had established themselves before Duke and others - Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, Brandon de Wilde, Paula Prentiss, sometime later, making for a nice melange. Preminger keeps a firm if fairly dull hand on the wheel and a fair time is had by all.

I actually read the novel, and the movie is much more faithful to it than most screen adoptions. I agree that the model work was quite poor, but extremely forgivable given the strong story-line and acting. It captures the feel of the naval war in the Pacific for the Americans quite well. Since quite a number of other reviewers have agreed with me, the rest of this review will concentrate on differences between the movie and what actually happened.Motor torpedo boats did sink a battleship once--in World War I. The PT boats of this war never sank anything larger than a destroyer, and few of those. Many had their torpedoes removed to fit small cannons, useful for sinking barges and floating drums. While new craft could reach 40 knots in calm water, engines tended to wear out quickly, and in combat conditions, the PT boats were generally slower than the ships they were trying to attack.There never was a daylight battle between any Japanese battleships and American cruisers. There were two night battles, one at Guadalcanal and one at Surigao Strait in the Philippines, and in the latter, the American cruisers were backed by six battleships, versus only two Japanese battleships and one cruiser.The mighty Yamato never fought anything more formidable than destroyers, and doesn't seem to have scored a single hit on an enemy vessel. Her sister Musashi never sighted an enemy vessel. Both were sunk by aircraft. Their poor performance might be explained by their spending most of the war at anchor. They were comfortable ships even for enlisted men, at least by the standards of the Japanese navy of the time. Yamato was often called "the Yamato Hotel" and the Musashi "the Palace."The U.S. Navy did very little mining during World War II. Laying mines to protect Guadalcanal would have been a wonderful idea, but then, as now, mines were unpopular weapons with the admirals. The final battle in the movie and the novel seems to be most similar to a night battle on November 13, 1942 between a US force of cruisers and destroyers and a Japanese task force built around two older battleships (each about half the size of Yamato). The US force suffered heavy casualties and two US Admirals were killed, but it crippled one of the battleships, leaving it vulnerable to US bombers the next day.

Jery Goldsmith's score certainly deserves great credit for boosting this film's status in spite of its flaws primarily in such simple matters as editing, continuity, factual blunders, and shadows of filming equipment showing up in a number of places. Of particular note in the Goldsmith score is the very compelling "San Francisco" theme music (a name I give for the sake of this commentary) as Paula Prentiss is seen grabbing a trolley car to meet "Mac" two-thirds of the way into the film. The french horn passage incorporated into that as Tom Tryon disembarks from the hospital ship is a crowning glory - a great set piece of film music!