Inchon

I am one of the few people on this Earth who actually saw "Inchon" during its brief theatrical run in 1982, and did not see it again until a cable recording came my way very recently. It was fascinating to revisit this train wreck of a movie that took what should have been a fascinating event in history, and instead with a bloated budget of $40 million and the interference of the Moonies, turned it into something that ultimately isn't the worst thing ever produced for the screen, but at the same time is something that could have been made cheaply for TV at a fraction of the cost.

The thing "Inchon" most resembles is the godawful 1979 ABC miniseries "Pearl" which took the events of another famous event in history, and gave us a soapy, silly melodrama about a bunch of boring fictional characters. In "Inchon", the goings on of Ben Gazzara, Jacqueline Bisset (who looks stunning), Richard Roundtree and the wasted David Janssen could just as easily have been at home in some made for TV potboiler that utilized stock footage for the big moments. It's because "Inchon" had an A-level budget, and an inordinance of expensive set design and extras etc. that in the end made its flaws magnified in ways that a cheap TV miniseries like "Pearl" could keep obscured.

The acting...sheesh, Olivier does get the look of MacArthur right but Terence Young was clearly asleep when giving him instruction on how to deliver his lines, and the script he was given didn't help matters either. As for the rest, they're okay in a TV movie kind of way, but that's largely damning with faint praise. Jerry Goldsmith's score is great, as is the cinemtaography.

I will say one thing though to a couple reviewers though who think the greatest sin of this movie is its anti-communism. That is really about the ONLY thing you can give this movie a plus for, because the North Koreans of Kim Il Sung were a brutal thug regime and their invasion of the South was not a case of as one reviewer falsely implied one where atrocities were equally committed by both sides. The prologue to the movie that summarizes how Kim Il Sung flew to Moscow to receive permission from Stalin to go ahead with the invasion is dead accurate in its description of the real history and it sadly offers the initial hope that we're going to get a movie more in the mold of "The Longest Day" or "Tora! Tora! Tora!". Instead we got a movie that was as noted in the mold of "Pearl" and almost exclusively utilizing the bad fictional subplots that nearly wrecked "Midway." So yes, "Inchon" is bad, but not necessarily for the reasons that some people would like to have us think. It was ultimately more the fault of the scriptwriters, the actors and the director that "Inchon" turned out to be as bad as it was, than the heavy-hand of the Moonie cult (though their PR for the movie certainly dragged it down further).

Inchon exists in at least three versions, all of them very rare: a 90 minute British video version called "Operation Inchon"; a 105 minute version; and the full 140 minutes version released theatrically in 1981. This is a review of the 140 minute version.

The past twenty years or so have turned Inchon into one of the film industry's great jokes. Its huge budget, and the meagre box office returns it made, have also destined it to forever be remembered as the biggest flop of all-time. If ever a film deserved to be labelled as "infamous", then Inchon is it.

Laurence Olivier top-bills as Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Highly decorated for his WWII heroics, MacArthur is called upon to repel an army of communist forces from North Korea who have invaded their South Korean neighbours in 1950. Against the will of his colleagues, MacArthur masterminds an ambitious landing at the awkwardly-situated port of Inchon. Interwoven into this invasion story are several sub-plots, including the story of Barbara Hallsworth (Jacqueline Bisset), an American lady who leads a group of orphans to safety, and her husband Maj. Frank Hallsworth (Ben Gazzara), who is ordered to seize and hold a strategically important lighthouse in Inchon harbour.

It is extraordinary that a budget of over $45 million was allocated to such a badly scripted film. The dialogue is utterly laughable, almost in the style of an exceptionally bad, cheesy TV mini-series. Left helpless in the firing line by the terrible script, the actors (many of them greatly talented) give undisciplined performances. Olivier's turn as MacArthur, for example, is surreal in its awfulness. The battle scenes are done on a big scale but fail to convey authenticity or realism. And, worst of all, there's a peculiar religious subtext as MacArthur repeatedly rants on about the God-given justness he senses in the cause of America and her allies. The film has curiosity value (it's perversely interesting to see so many stars in such deep trouble) but beyond that it offers nothing worth your time.

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

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.

I recall the one weekend that this movie was in theatrical release. I was on a first date and there were absolutely no date-worthy movies playing. A bunch of well-dressed students (whom I later guessed to be Moonies)were lined up to see this one. Upon investigation I saw the producers were raffling off a Rolls Royce to all who bought a ticket. "Ooohh," she said. "Wouldn't it be fun if we won a car by going to see a movie?" OK, so I relented.

In retrospect even if we had won the car it wouldn't have been worth it. It wasn't even laughably bad. It was just pathetic, watching Sir Laurence's career spiraling down the money pit. Just a few short months after watching him flounder in "The Jazz Singer," here he was with an inch of pancake makeup spouting religious homilies.

It was a time when MacArthur was out of favor and the Cold War was in full swing, so the Reverend Moon was determined to use the latter to rectify the former. I am certainly not an expert on the military history of the Korean War so make no claims as to its historical accuracy. But with the over the top moralizing here I sat there knowing I was being manipulated, brainwashed, whatever.

And, on cue, the proselytizing for the Unification Church began as soon as the final credits rolled.

Uck, what a sickening experience. I never went out with her again.

Fortunately Sir Laurence rebounded shortly after with Clash Of The Titans and a few other not-quite-so-bad performances on made-for-TV movies so we aren't stuck with this as the last impression of this great actor.