Kaiten - Human Torpedo War

What comes out on the Dutch shock label I watch and mostly those flicks are pure horror or arty flicks but this flick is one exception. The title do make you think you are ready to watch another over the top horror with a title like 'human torpedo war' but be advised. This is not a horror this is just a pure drama telling the story from what happened at the end of WWII.

Not that many people did knew that while Japan was losing the war they chose to come out not only with kamikaze fighter planes, which are common known for everybody but they also decided to make torpedo's with humans in them. In fact, one person controlled the torpedo while moving towards a battleship. They were big enough and full of ammunition to sink a ship with one human torpedo or better known as Kaiten.

The flick here shows how young men decided to join the army especially the navy to fight for their country. Once they were into the Kaiten division they became hero's. But this flick isn't about the hero's but about what they felt and what they did to become a Kaiten hero. It's not like the old American war flicks full of hero's, this is about what really happened and even what happened if you couldn't succeed your mission.

For me the acting was sublime and even as I'm not really into drama's I kept watching until the end to know what would happen once the captain agrees to fire the Kaitens. There's no cruelty shown or even gore attached, a thing that's common for Japanese flicks. And even a s a big horror fan I would recommend it because it really happened and the idea of knowing that you are a human weapon is in fact the real horror. Some situations are maybe again hard to understand if you aren't into Eastern culture.

It's an outsider for the shock label but I'm glad I haver seen it. I never heard of Kaiten before but by now I know they really existed.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 4/5 Comedy 0/5

This one lobs about the middle of the submarine movie league table - not as good as BEDFORD INCIDENT or MORNING DEPARTURE, better than RUN SILENT RUN DEEP or GRAY LADY DOWN.

The plot shows, in not all that convincing detail, the training and deployment of Kaitan or one man human torpedoes in the later stages of WW2. Being a Japanese film gives it unfamiliarity and the cultural shadings may be lost on a Western Audience. Detail, like rising above the depth charges, is new. There's ambivalence toward the instructors, who are harsh but concerned and towards the young kamikaze operators who are not too bright but determined to show The Right Stuff.

The story line is broken by details of the lead's home life - star pitcher for the Meiji baseball team (they don't labor the irony of playing the national game of the enemy,) his resigned parents and his squeeze. Some of the imagery is striking - the farewell at the train station with with all the red dot flags - and the attempted launch does have genuine suspense, with the implications of failure explored in a detail which is the film's most interesting element.

Production is assured without being all that convincing. The underwater effects work is good.