Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Iseerphia All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Robert J. Maxwell Cliff Robertson skippers a submarine in the South Pacific in 1942 during and after the Battle of the Coral Sea, a slug fest that lost the US more ships than the Japanese but prevented their landing on New Guinea, just across the Torrest Straits from Australia. Subs played no important part in the battle and the American forces had little idea of what they were doing because this was their first real engagement since Pearl Harbor.It begins with an action scene, Robertson's boat being attacked by enemy aircraft while rescuing some downed flyers. That scene is okay. Then, below decks, the movie begins to macerate. There is always banter among enlisted men in these war movies. It may be about the meaning of FUBAR, as in "Saving Private Ryan", or about the delicate strucure of an ordinary leaf, as in "A Walk in the Sun." Sometimes it's amusing. Here it begins with a silly argument between Bates and the man he thinks stole his chewing gum. The reason for the theft is never explained, nor is the hole in the pants of the thief. It's markedly pointless. When the Exec peers through the scope and sees a Japanese carrier, he exclaims, "Sweet sufferin' sukiyaki." Robertson: "You can say that again." "Sweet sufferin' sukiyaki." Not a lot of effort has gone into the script, but that's not a reflection on Robertson, who delivers his usual solid performance, though some might say stolid.Sent on a top secret mission about a third of the way through, the script becomes untethered and changes to a Japanese POW camp, one of those camps with a civilized commander who has spent time in America and admires the country but who feels an overwhelming duty to discharge his military obligations. Well, it worked in "The Bridge On the River Kwai." The strenuous work in the prison camp is lightened somewhat by the presence of a pretty blond nurse, who has no facilities to cope with the pneumonia contracted by the executive officer. Also, living the with Japanese occupiers of the island is the attractive Gia Scala who has declared herself "neutral." But Robertson is disincline to toy with her. His intention is to escape from the island (the size of Manhattan and surrounded by five hundred miles of ocean) and he asks Scala for weapons. "I couldn't possibly do that. Perhaps some knife blades." With barely a glance at her, Robertson snaps, "Get 'em." He needs her to get the knife blades so they can try to escape. She does and they do, but escape is no easy matter. There are casualties. ("Sorry, Peg. I'm afraid I can't make it. You'll have to go on without me.")The title of the film sounds like an epic along the lines of "Saving Private Ryan" or "The Longest Day." It's not. The battle of the Coral Sea lasts about five minutes at the very end and is largely cobbled together from familiar newsreel footage or miniatures from earlier movies like "Air Force", "Destination Tokyo," and "Gung Ho." If you intend to watch it, don't do it for a lesson in history.

oliverdearlove This is a terrible film and not about the Battle of the Coral Sea - one of the five carriers battles of the Pacific War.The idea is laughable - motley POWs being abused so that the commanding officer will give up information. In the event I think the Kempetei ( Imperial Secret Police ) would just have beaten it out of him. The reality was the allied POWs were terribly badly treated.Read a book or watch a cartoon instead.The only true fact I could glean was that there WAS a secret treaty between Vichy France and Japan after May 1940 that the Japanese would march in unopposed to the French Far East Empire ( Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to be) and in return French Nationals there would not be interned. Hence Miss Phillips - I didn't pay enough attention to see if it came out in the film

max von meyerling Maybe there should be a genre called "situation drama". The 50s was the era of the double feature. Often there was a main feature with what was called a supporting feature. Often independently produced, they were films made to a price and sold outright to a studio. There were a load of "westerns" which were made restricted to a tiny and mainly ethical plot as opposed to the non-stop action of the so-called juvenile westerns. They were largely shot in the studio and on a tired town set on the back lot. Outdoor dialog scenes were shot on clever but artificial sets. Action could be shot MOS. Even if made in cinemascope they were shot B&W. A "name", usually a faded second line star from the late Golden Age would be employed and then a few actors and pretty women to set him off, then some anonymous background people. These would populate a space but were limited in numbers. The secret of these films is the scheduling. Crowd all the crowd scenes would be shot in one or two days. Supporting actors would have their scenes shot in two or three days. Most of the scenes are contrived to be dialog, two shot, three shot, and four shot set-ups. Most of the time the town seems to be inhabited solely by the principal players. The leading actor would get a handsome but not astronomical salary. I remember working for a producer in 1980 and discovering the prices for some of the actors- it was possible to hire the likes of Chuck Heston or Bob Mitchum for $400,000 and virtually any actress in the world except for a dozen stars for $4,000 a week. That was in 1980 (in any case this was way out of the ballpark for my producer). Never the less, most of the pictures weren't all that terrible, at least at first. Late, when the formula became known, everyone and anyone could turn out films like sausages I believe is the cliché. Some of the later ones are merely perfunctory. At their best they were training grounds for new talents and a place to revisit the heroes of the recent past. Its also a world where one becomes aware that the casting for name recognition meant that a producer who didn't see the innate dignity and urbanity of, say, Dana Andrews, would think it would be a good idea that, well, he's a good looking guy, we'll put him in a western.What does this have to do with a film called THE BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA? First of all, the title is misleading, as Peter Griffin said when he was being escorted from the poop deck. Forget the prequel to Midway tag. It's a war picture but the sub-genre isn't navel warfare, but rather a POW picture. The only things representing the battle are the bookends, stock footage (some anachronistic) of navel warfare kind of stuff. The set-up: Cliff Robertson is a sub commander sent out on a recon mission before the aforementioned battle with the strong suggestion that if he has to sacrifice his boat, his men, and himself he must not reveal the dingus, the rendezvous point. Emphasis. So of course that's just what happens. Japanese Navy frogmen in post war scuba (!) gear attach mines to the sub and Robertson gives up after scuttling the boat. That's the first half hour.So Robertson and some character actors are separated from the crew who were never so numerous anyway. They are taken to Club Med, I mean the Japanese POW camp. This film was made at the beginning of the "rehabilitate Japan period". The men are forcibly put to work walking on a wheel to dredge up the drinking water for the camp. This is no Bataan Death March. But for no more than one hour at a time. There are people in my neighborhood who pay several hundred dollars a month to do that. There is a knockout blond Australian nurse who lives with them and a dark woman, daughter of a planter, who may be either French or Italian but claims to be "neutral". The POWs have more room for fewer people than even Hogan. The Japanese commandant makes several strong requests to Robertson to reveal what he knows but he refuses. All they have to do is survive 3 days (that's when they're supposed to rendezvous. The dingus again. Time, like the studio sets, is compressed and confined. The commandant fails and either he's going to be replaced or Robertson is going to be taken away to be interrogated to death or both. So they escape and some of them get killed and the rest get back home safely and the Battle is fought and we win. The end. (BTW- the secret ID code is Fancy Free, which was the name of the wartime ballet about three sailors on leave in New York that was developed into ON THE TOWN)It was an important battle, but not the greatest sea battle in history. I think maybe Jutland or Port Arthur were both larger. It was the first sea battle fought between aircraft carriers and where the opponents never saw each other. It was usually accounted a tie but important as a step in turning the war back to Japan but really just a curtain raiser to the epochal Battle of Midway.THE BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA is merely another time passer, somewhere between a real movie and TV. The only scene that I remember from seeing this film as a kid was the one where the American Sgt., played by a frequent face on TV, wins a wrestling match but is shot in the back by his defeated opponent. But during those long double features it was good to have a picture where one could leave to go to the bathroom or buy popcorn without missing much that was going on.

PudgyPandaMan I'm a big fan of WWII movies - even though Im a 40 yr old female. Go figure?! So I was glad to come across one I hadn't seen yet.The basic story of the movie follows events leading up to the Battle of the Coral Sea, not the actual battle itself. One thing I'm unsure of is whether the storyline of the movie itself actually took place. The basic synopsis is a Sub commander, Jeff Conway (played by Cliff Robertson}, is given basically an intelligence mission to go scope out a build-up of Japanese navy ships & carriers in the Pacific. They aren't to engage the enemy, just capture photos & record details of the specific ships and their locations. In the process, their sub is discovered and ordered to surrender. The main crew is sent to a regular POW camp but the commander and his officers are sent to a special island interrogation camp in order to try to force info regarding their mission out of the commander.As I mentioned before, there isn't a tremendous amount of action since its the events that precede the actual battle. But it still kept me interested enough to keep watching. I think Cliff Robertson plays his role very well and is the best in the picture. I also liked Teru Shimada who played the Japanese commander Mori at the POW camp. I like when he & Robertson first meet and play a sort of cat & mouse game trying to size each other up.This movie may not keep you on the edge of your seat, but is still worth the watching to see whether or not Robertson's character gives up the info or is able to get off the island.