Battle of the Coral Sea

A submarine crew captured by the Japanese attempt to escape from a remote island prison camp during WWII. Young leading man Cliff Robertson's efforts to appear older by sporting a Gable 'tache gives him the unfortunate appearance of a second-rate gigolo in uniform, but he gives a decent performance in this reasonably entertaining war picture. Presumably, budgetary constraints are responsible for its' prison camp being one of the most sparsely populated in movie history.

Just in case you're wondering Battle Of The Coral Sea has absolutely nothing to do with the Pacific Allies engaging the Japanese Fleet from May 4 to 8, 1942. The title should not lead you to expect to get a film like The Longest Day or Midway which are factual docudramas about those battles. The Coral Sea battle does deserve such a film and maybe an American or Australian film maker will do such a film some day. This ain't it.

This is instead about Cliff Robertson and his submarine sent on a scouting expedition to find out Japanese intentions. They do find out, but the submarine is destroyed and Robertson and his crew are taken prisoner.

After that the film plot line is one of escape as Robertson, his surviving crew members and some Aussie prisoners are also looking to break out. Along for the ride is Gia Scala daughter of a French plantation owner who is Japanese speaking and serves as interpreter. She's surviving the best she can by coyly alleging Vichy sympathies.

What Robertson might have been doing is anyone's guess because we knew of Japanese intentions having broken the Japanese code. So the film is false on the face of it. Add to that Robertson's rather unbelievable escape, similar to Errol Flynn and his crew in Desperate Journey.

Hopefully one day we'll get the real story of the Coral Sea. Demand it rather than this be the film that purportedly tells it.

A moustached Cliff Robertson as a submarine commander looks incredibly dashing in this trial run for his return to the Pacific a few years later as the young JFK in charge of PT-109.

Atmospheric black & white photography by veteran Technicolor cameraman Wilfrid Cline competes with an emphatic score by Ernest Gold (who shortly afterwards collected an Oscar for his work on 'Exodus').

Post 'River Kwai' the Japanese commander played by Teru Shimada is allowed to be slightly more human than he would fifteen years earlier; while the two ill-fated European leading ladies are not quite as incongruous as you anticipate when you first see their names in the credits.

The Japanese lost the 11,000 ton light-carrier Shoho, while the Americans lost the much more valuable Lexington. In addition, each-side had a top-notch CV (Shokaku and Yorktown) damaged. The Japanese had a 3rd carrier, Zuikaku, which was undamaged during the battle. Based on that, the Japanese won the battle, however, their air group was punished heavily. Their carriers were assigned to support the invasion of Port Moresby, and they had suffered a lot of plane losses so that they no longer felt confident they could do this. So, this swings it to an overall draw.

In the end, it would be the Japanese who were hurting more, because the Americans not only had a lot more pilots in reserve, and thus could replace losses more easily, at this point in the war the Japanese Navy had the more experienced pilots. So, losing pilots hurt them more than it hurt the USA. Also, it took nearly 2 months to sail Shokaku back to Japan and repair her, but Yorktown headed for Pearl Harbor and was patched-up and ready for battle (although not fully repaired) in 3 days.

Incidentally, their plane/pilot losses were so heavy that Zuikaku sat out the battle of Midway waiting for replacement pilots. This was a huge mistake since the 5th flight deck would have been invaluable.

"The characters and incidents portrayed and the names used herein are fictitious, and any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely accidental and unintentional", says the opening credits. That statement is just about the most accurate thing in this film.

The Battle of the Coral Sea was a strategically-important naval engagement fought between the U.S. and Japanese Navies between 4 and 8 May 1942. It stopped a Japanese attempt to carry out an amphibious invasion against Port Moresby, the last Allied stronghold in new Guinea. It also stopped Japanese expansion towards Australia.

However, there is nothing in this movie about the Battle of the Coral Sea until the last ten minutes. The rest is a fairly routine story about POWs and their warders. consequently any viewer interested in learning about the Battle of the Coral Sea is advised to look elsewhere than this mis- named movie.