Infierno en el mar

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.

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.

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.

With the Japanese Navy steadily advancing towards Australia the decision is made to send a submarine named the U. S. S. Dragonfish out into the Coral Sea to gather intelligence on all enemy ships in that area and then proceed to a highly classified rendezvous point to deliver whatever information they may have collected. The man in charge of this mission is "LtCmdr Jeff Conway" (Cliff Robertson) is given strict orders to do whatever is necessary to prevent the Japanese from discovering the rendezvous point. However, his determination to carry out this order is soon tested after he is forced to scuttle the submarine and his men are subsequently tortured in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp pending his cooperation. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film started off relatively well and remained entertaining up until the final 10 minutes or so when stock war footage was inserted for effect. That being said, while certainly not a great war film by any means, it managed to keep my attention for the most part and I have rated it accordingly.

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.