Hell in the Pacific (1968)

. ...In 1969 I was a Marine infantryman. The Corps sent me to RVN free of charge. I did, however, get to spend time in Hong Kong. While others may have spent all their time carousing, I watched as many films as possible while there. ...My Chinese date took me to see a film in Mandarin with English and Cantonese subtitles. We also saw McKenna's Gold with Cantonese subtitles... and most relevant... Hell in the Pacific with Cantonese and English subtitles. In short, I got to understand every comment that Torshiro Mifune uttered. (Spoiler alert...)...Not that it added a great deal to the film. When Mifune's character gets urinated on, he charges in the ocean to wash himself shouting, "Dirty, dirty!" When he gets drunk near the end he expresses his melancholia by singing a dirge, "If I die on the land, I'll be a land corpse, if I die on the sea, I'll be a sea corpse..." Not the best frame of mind to be interrupted by Marvin's character....In short, you didn't miss a lot by being in the same boat as Marvin's character and understanding so little. But the Chinese didn't get it and just slapped on the subtitles... Rhodesia Jim

Interesting and profound.Very interesting movie, with a great moral message. Builds slowly, if anything to show the gap that has to be bridged between the two characters. Ultimately they discover that peace and co-operation are more constructive than war and strife - surely a code to live by.Solid direction by John Boorman (who also directed Deliverance and Excalibur, among others), to go with the excellent plot. Good performances by Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, in one of the smallest casts ever (though there have been movies with a cast of one)...

It's a brave and impudent movie -- just two great stars, Marvin and Mifune, one Japanese and the other an American pilot. The score is by the inventive and sonorous Lalo Schifrin, the photography by the seasoned craftsman, Conrad Hall. There's mutual harassment at first, sometimes comically expressed, as when Marvin pees on Mifune below. Ultimately, the two men realize they must cooperate to survive, but they're overwhelmed by the larger picture of the war around them.It's curious piece of movie making. Two enemies isolated on a rainforest-covered lava lump sticking out of an indifferent ocean. I enjoyed it the first time I saw it, chiefly because I wanted to see where it was going. The second time around is a sluggish trek through some highly stylized material.If you haven't seen it, you'll probably enjoy it. There is a contrast of some magnitude in the personalities of Mifune and Marvin. Mifune is angry, all business, proud. Marvin is an importuning elf, slipping here and there through the shrubbery, begging for water and spitefully destroying Mifune's primitive fish net.

There is World War II going on out there.Two men find themselves shot down on a small uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean.Those men are enemies, the other is an American man while the other is Japanese.They are battling against each other.Then they realize they're in the same situation, and if they don't start working together they never get off that island.John Boorman is the director of Hell in the Pacific (1968).There are only two actors in this movie, but luckily those two are most fitting men.Lee Marvin plays the part of the American Pilot.Captain Tsuruhiko Kurodais played by Toshiro Mifune.Really great job from both of them.It's pretty great to watch the survival game of these two.Like when they build the raft and hit the ocean.I recommend this movie.