Tora! Tora! Tora! Reviews

Prior to "Tora!" movies showing the attack were jingoistic propaganda; afterwards, the attack was an excuse to indulge in Hollywood's fascination with American self-loathing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Expensive but ultimately rather empty.

Full Review

The Japanese sneak attack that plunged the US into WW II is lavishly and fairly accurately, if not enthrallingly, brought to the screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

The film looks gorgeous in HD, and remains the best Hollywood treatment of Pearl Harbor.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10

an interesting footnote in cinema history... though it's no less propaganda than the flag wavers from the 1940s

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

Strictly for history buffs only, because it presents the story in the most dry way possible. It's like a History Channel re-enactment with all of the right aircraft carriers and airplanes.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Historical accuracy stands as the biggest strength

Full Review | Original Score: B

Both overall director Richard Fleischer and his Japanese counterparts do a dull job, and the monotonously low-key tone of scene after scene almost suggests that each was filmed without a sense of ultimate slotting in the finished form.

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Works well as a history lesson, and the recreation of the 12/7/41 attack is spectacular, but the film is much less effective on a character level.

| Original Score: 7/10

This big-budget, noble-but-dull account of the run up to Pearl Harbour is high on historical veracity but low on drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

The climax, in particular, manages to be more than just a shoot-out, with Fleischer's intelligent direction generating a real feeling of chaos and apocalypse.

Full Review

Big, bloated, boring WWII drama

| Original Score: C

As history, it seems a fairly accurate account of what happened, although it never much bothers its head about why. As film art, it is nothing less than a $25-million irrelevancy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Tora! Tora! Tora! is one of the deadest, dullest blockbusters ever made.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

Told from both sides, and certainly better than "Pearl Harbor."

| Original Score: 4/5

Gives the viewer a true sense of the frightening chaos felt at the time.

Full Review | Original Score: C

Stodgy, but more edifying and entertaining than 'Pearl Harbor.'

| Original Score: 3/5

It's rare for a feature film to attain the trifecta of entertaining, informing, and educating.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Displaying an uncharacteristic even-handedness for Hollywood, this Japanese-American production is certainly the epic equal of Pearl Harbor, while consistently maintaining an almost unimpeachable honesty with its dual perspectives.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The characters are merely devices to spout textbook material, facts, and figures.

Full Review | Original Score: 57/100