Inchon

Many years ago, before the existence of YouTube (where you can watch this movie if you really want to see it), I arranged for an Internet buddy of mine to watch my bootleg copy of it, since he really wanted to see it. After he saw it, his comment pretty much sums up my view of the movie: "Painfully dull and mediocre." Yes, you may have heard that the critical consensus at the time of the movie's release was that the movie was incredibly inept a la PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, but that's not the case. It's just boring for the most part, and unintentional laughs are hard to find. But there's more fault to be found than just that. It's frankly embarrassing at times to view Laurence Olivier, who was at this point far from his prime as well as being miscast. As a matter of fact, the rest of the cast doesn't do much better in giving compelling performances. And while an insane amount of money was spent on production, much of the movie has a made for television look and feel to it.

I have a feeling that my comments won't stop people who really want to watch this movie (which as of this date has still not been issued on VHS or DVD) after hearing so many bad things about it over the years. To a degree I can understand this. But all the same, after you watch it, don't say that you weren't warned.

I never got to see this movie in a theatrical release; I got to see the first part of it cut up for cable TV -- on a cable channel not known for movies. I wanted, honestly, to see a reverential treatment of the UN side of the Korean War, a war whose importance is now greatly underrecognized, and especially of one of the key battles in history. The war was, after all, the first in which the commies did not succeed in turning over a domino, so to speak.

The movie got off to a bad start with one of the actors (Ben Gazzara) launching into a long narrative monologue about the father of General MacArthur while on an airline flight. First of all, General Douglas MacArthur is the key figure of the movie, and his father was already long dead and irrelevant to the plot. Second, the long-winded monologue is not ordinary conversation of the type that one would expect between airline passengers! With the possible exception of university professors who can't be fired and dictators who can't be criticized, nobody gets away with such long-winded, irrelevant, narrative monologues in normal life.

Absurdities pile upon absurdities, and irrelevancies pile upon irrelevancies. Soldiers synchronize watches whose second hands aren't moving, and one gets a closeup of such an action. If you are going to show a close-up of any action, then make it real. Maudlin events at an orphanage take up much footage. Well, the Korean War was a carnage for civilians of all types, wasn't it? Soldiers taking Inchon fail to show fear -- and I can't imagine anyone going behind enemy lines not being scared out of his wits unless a psycho. Taking the lighthouse at Inchon, soldiers notice that the lighting and lens assembly was made in France (anyone who knows anything about lighthouses == and I live in a state that has lots of them -- knows that the lighthouse mechanisms and lenses from about a century ago all came from France).

The best movie about the Korean War remains MASH, and it centers upon support units. The brilliant invasion of central Korea at Inchon deserves far better treatment than this quicksand.

For the most part no one has watched this film in the twenty plus years since it was released to theaters. Considering that almost no one saw it when it was released I think the producers certainly know what they are doing.

While the film, which tells of the turning point in the Korean War, isn't good, or even fair, its not the worst war film ever made.Granted its close, but its not in the top ten or even top 25.

As bad as it is it should be watched by anyone in film school as examples of what not to do for money. First and foremost is Olivier's performance as Mac Arthur which IS simply so bad that that every award he ever received should have had to have been given back. Its one of the screens worst moments, and a warning of what happens when wax figures are left too long in the sun. Olivier's make up makes him look like the left over at fire sale in a wax museum.

The film is indifferently directed while the writing is bad TV soap opera. Its cleared no one cared about this film other than its producer who threw scads of money but to no avail.

An example of how and why not to make a movie.

I never thought I'd ever hear that line in my entire life. Laurence Olivier is a highly esteemed well-established actor with many film accreditations under his belt from a career in the film industry that has spanned well over six decades. Why he chose to sign on to this monstrosity of a film is just beyond belief.

"INCHON" had the misfortune of being released in 1981, the first year the infamous Golden Raspberry Award (a.k.a. Razzie) came into existence and it grandly swept nearly every category including Worst Picture and Worst Actor.

Upon it's theatrical release, "INCHON" was heavily panned by the critics and played in theaters to which no one bothered showing up. It was pulled almost a few weeks after its initial release. The production and creativity involved with this highly-expensive film project involved nearly 5 whole years in the making, a crew of 250 technicians, 3000 actors (mostly extras), 18 tanks, 12 armored personnel carriers, 24 jeeps, a plethora of explosives and special effects and a bloated budget of nearly 48 million dollars. Did I also forget to mention that this film was financed by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon?

Yes, in published interviews with Reverend Moon, he has openly stated that 'God' himself TOLD him to make this movie. With that controversy aside, "INCHON" itself is a repulsive scrap of film. The premise for "INCHON" is loosely based on the incidents involving the United Nations forces landing at Inchon, port city of Seoul, during the Korean War on September 15, 1950. It is a wretched retelling of General Douglas MacArthur's amphibious victory in the early stages of the Korean War.

Laurence Olivier portrays MacArthur, supported by an international star cast which would include Ben Gazarra, Richard Roundtree, David Janssen and Jacqueline Bisset who looks absolutely ridiculous in the role as the wife of an Army Major. Unfortunately, the biggest problem here is that the director, Terence Young, finds it impossible to overcome the poor script which generally leaves only the wartime melodrama and pyrotechnics for interest.

There is absolutely nothing positive about "INCHON" to talk about. The unedited version runs for nearly two and a half hours. It is a painful experience to watch this off-base and factually incorrect travesty. Furthermore, I find it extremely embarrassing to watch Laurence Olivier making a fool out of himself by appearing in this noisy and absurd garbage when he should have been finding time to redeem his reputation after starring in the Razzie-winning "THE JAZZ SINGER".

Shame on everyone involved in this movie. It is extremely impossible to find a copy of "INCHON" at your local video store and no cable channel would dare run it, which is just as well. Trust me, you don't want to see this movie.

My Rating - 0 out of 10

You know a movie is gonna be bad when it warns that the events depicted in this fictional movie are fictional, but that's the least of the problems with the over-budget, over-directed, and overly long wet blanket war epic Inchon. The movie takes place during the Communist overthrow in Korea and the Battle of Inchon in 1950. It also throws in stories involving Barbara (Jacqueline Bassett) driving through South Korea with orphan children to meet her ex-husband Lt. Hallsworth (Ben Gazzara) and Douglas MacArthur (Laurence Olivier) setting up plans for battle and raiding a lighthouse to signal the battleships. I guess Terence Young was trying to channel David Lean with a giant cast of extras in grand sets and landscapes, but in Inchon, the story and subplots connect so little it feels more like a pilot for a 1950's TV show than a movie. However, the cornball melodrama, overabundance on pyrotechnic effects, and horrendous writing makes it more on par with the material for B-movies. More problems: the Korean invasion scenes tie very little to what's going on in the story, the battle sequences seem randomly scattered for no coherent reason, every extra overacts when blown up, and the love story is meaningless. Worst of all, when MacArthur showed up thirty minutes in, the movie seemed to jump ship on one story and steer focus to another, almost as if the screenwriter forgot who the main characters were and wanted to mimic Patton. Well to my knowledge, Laurence Olivier is no George C. Scott and Robin Moore and Laird Koenig are no Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, either. To compare Inchon to Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor would be an extraordinary insult, as Mr. Bay has more respect for explosions and knows how to keep his schlocky storylines consistently. Inchon, on the other hand, is a complete messy disaster from start to finish. (1 Corn Cob Pipe out of 5)