Enemy Within

Totally fictionalized account of the Ni'ihau Incident.

As a World War II historian I've been hoping for years that someone would produce a film about the incident that was the main impetus for incarcerating Japanese Americans living on the West Coast in concentration camps (those living in Hawai'i were not incarcerated, except for a handful who were known to be enemy sympathizers). I didn't even know about this movie until more than three years after it was made; probably because it's garbage and no one wanted to advertise it. I'm not going to take the time to create spoilers and point out everything wrong about this production, but suffice it to say that it's just wrong.

The original events would have made a better story. The most unHawaiian movie about Hawaii. Everything was off. From houses to clothes. Hawaiians didn't hunt boar with long bows and who spears fish that way. What Nisei speaks with a Japanese accent. It would have helped if the film makers did a little research before the filmed.

Read the Wiki story about the Niihau Incident before you watch this movie, watch the movie and afterward read the Wiki story again to connect all the dots. Watch the movie again and you'll probably realize it was a good movie.

Some parts of the movie weren't accurate like the plane crashing into the sea instead of in a field. At the end , they had the Japanese pilot stabbing himself. The real story was Ben throwing the Pilot against the wall and his wife knocked him out. Ben slit the pilots throat and killed him. The American Soldiers at the end looked like Eastern Europe Communist soldiers with the odd looking uniforms. I wish they showed a little of the Pearl Harbor Attack in the beginning .

A pretty good movie. I visited Pearl Harbor about a month and a half after the 50th anniversary of the attack. Went out on a Navy Launch and visited the Arizona memorial. Flew over to Kauai and stayed there about 3 nights. Never heard about the Niihau Incident , learned about it watching a documentary about the Attack on Pearl Harbor.

The events in the movie are very slow, that I almost fell asleep. There are also many scenes in Japanese where you can't understand what's happening but you have to guess. And the end is not good. In short, the movie can be shortened to a half an hour instead wasting two hours on such slow movie.

First, the Niihau Incident is a great dramatic story from WWII, so why mess with it and change things. I'd give the director a pass on the plane crashing into the ocean instead of a field, because I'm sure that dropped the budget a lot (easier to fake in a pool). But, the other changes are rather insulting, primarily because they aren't better or more dramatic than the truth. I guess they wanted make up the actions and motivations of the Japanese so it might balance out some sort of morality tale. Weird.

Second, while the performances and productions weren't bad per se, it came across more as TV quality, rather than cinematic. Some of the dialogue was clunky, simplistic and didn't work.

Meh.