A Batalha do Mar do Coral

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.

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.

I am pleased to see that the vast majority of my IMDB colleagues have already done the heavy spadework required to bury this awful movie. Therefore, there is little for me to add beyond the fact that the film's title, as this review's title indicates, is your classic Hollywood bait and switch. In other words if you tune into this thing hoping to see some classic, naval combat then you will be grievously disappointed since the eponymous clash does not occur until the last five minutes or so and is mostly conveyed through stock footage. The vast majority of this dull dog is comprised of standard sub stuff and sub standard Japanese prison camp stuff (Think midget "Kwai" with a lobotomy). Give it a C minus.

The Japanese lost the 11,000 ton light-carrier Shoho, while the Americans lost the much more valuable Lexington. In addition, each-side had a top-notch CV (Shokaku and Yorktown) damaged. The Japanese had a 3rd carrier, Zuikaku, which was undamaged during the battle. Based on that, the Japanese won the battle, however, their air group was punished heavily. Their carriers were assigned to support the invasion of Port Moresby, and they had suffered a lot of plane losses so that they no longer felt confident they could do this. So, this swings it to an overall draw.

In the end, it would be the Japanese who were hurting more, because the Americans not only had a lot more pilots in reserve, and thus could replace losses more easily, at this point in the war the Japanese Navy had the more experienced pilots. So, losing pilots hurt them more than it hurt the USA. Also, it took nearly 2 months to sail Shokaku back to Japan and repair her, but Yorktown headed for Pearl Harbor and was patched-up and ready for battle (although not fully repaired) in 3 days.

Incidentally, their plane/pilot losses were so heavy that Zuikaku sat out the battle of Midway waiting for replacement pilots. This was a huge mistake since the 5th flight deck would have been invaluable.