Schlacht im Korallenmeer

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.

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.

When I watched "Battle of the Coral Sea", I naturally thought I'd be seeing a film all about this famous WWII battle. Instead, the battle is tacked on to the last 5-10 minutes of the movie and what precedes that isn't the battle or anything really about the battle! I am sure a lot of audience members were annoyed by this and what the film does show is poorly done (featuring lots of stock footage...some of which showed planes which never could have fought in the battle).

The story ACTUALLY is about Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Conway (Cliff Robertson) and his command of a submarine during the war. His ship is captured in a rather impossible to believe sequence but he is able to skuttle the boat after his crew is taken prisoner. The rest of the movie consists of Conway and a few other officers in a Japanese prison camp plotting their eventual escape.

So is the film any good? Not especially. It's not a good history lesson and the film itself only adequate. Not a terrible film...just not a very good one.

"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.

It's 1942. Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Conway (Cliff Robertson) commands the American submarine USS Dragonfish in the Pacific. He is given a reconnaissance mission and spots the Japanese fleet. Before he could report it, his crew gets captured and he is forced to scuttle his ship. They are transferred to an island prison where they join some Australian captives.

For a war movie, this starts with a lot of peeping at girls' butts. There is a bit of naval action. They use a lot of miniatures and some stock films. Then it's a series of story problems. First, all the Allied soldiers are way too cavalier. When they transfer the submarine crew to the island, there are only about ten of them. I don't know what happened to the rest of the crew. A lot of the prison life feels wrong and the escape is even more wrong. The best part of the movie is probably the last five minute during the Battle of the Coral Sea. It uses a few clips of real footage, but even here, the miniature footage looks so fake. Given the subject matter, this is a disappointment.