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(More customer reviews)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").
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