How sad is this?

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

When "Hell in the Pacific" debuted, it lost a buttload of money. And, after having just watched it, I can understand exactly why. It's slow beyond belief...and a great cure to insomnia!There really is no context for the film--you just have a Japanese soldier (Toshiro Mifune) and an American (Lee Marvin) stranded on an island during WWII. You later gather that Marvin's character must have been a pilot who was shot down...you know almost nothing about Mifune's. And, for much of the film, they torment and try to kill each other. Later, they call a truce and build a raft and leave. My wife kept saying "I hope they drown" during the raft sequence and I can't fault her. The film ran at a snail's pace and it mostly consisted of the two idiots yelling at each other in their native languages (oddly, they never figured to try to teach the other their language) and this made for a film that practically yelled "Turn me off" because it was so slow and unsatisfying.

Interesting and profound.Very interesting movie, with a great moral message. Builds slowly, if anything to show the gap that has to be bridged between the two characters. Ultimately they discover that peace and co-operation are more constructive than war and strife - surely a code to live by.Solid direction by John Boorman (who also directed Deliverance and Excalibur, among others), to go with the excellent plot. Good performances by Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, in one of the smallest casts ever (though there have been movies with a cast of one)...

Hell in the Pacific (1968)A great concept--two men are lost together on an island in the Pacific. The war is over, but prejudices remain, and one man is Japanese, one American. They don't share a language, so there is basically no dialog. There is only survival.How do you make a feature length movie about this without stretching the idea thin, without boring the viewer, without resorting to clichés of makeshift boats and coconut to eat? You don't. The movie is ambitious over very little, and if it seems impressive in some isolated, focused way, it is still a slow go.And you kind of know what the progression of events is going to be, as common human needs rise above nationalist myopia. What keeps it afloat at all is the odd combination of the quirky boorish stereotype American thug, Lee Marvin, who is not his best in this situation (but who has his own following--I like him in his crime films a lot) and the most famous Japanese actor of the period, the Kurosawa standard bearer Toshiro Mifune (who is an archetype of the vigorous, smart Japanese male).I have to admit I didn't really like the most recent parallel production, "Castaway," at least not the island parts (which everyone I know loved). In all these cases you depend on the acting, the actors themselves, to make it special. And for some that might be enough. It's a unique movie, for sure, a kind of old Hollywood hanger-on in the new Hollywood era. John Boorman had just finished the remarkable "Point Blank" with Marvin, and would soon work on "Deliverance," and all three have a masculine quality of rising about a hostile world and making it on your own terms.Finally, if you do get through it all, the last five minutes is important--clumsy and improbable and sensationalist after all that preceded, but important. It tries at last to talk about the difficulty of really understanding someone else, personally and culturally, and about the madness and indifference of war. It's 1968, after all.

In World War II, a shot-down American pilot (Lee Marvin) and the marooned Japanese Captain Tsuruhiko Kuroda (Toshiro Mifune) are stranded in a small island in the Pacific. When they find the presence of each other, the American tries to steal the water provision of the Japanese that protects it, initiating their personal war. After a period fighting each other, they decide to join forces and build a bamboo raft to seek a larger island."Hell in the Pacific" is a good movie about how struggle to survive supersedes any other feelings even in times of war. The Japanese and the American soldiers find how pointless is their fight and resolve their situation joining forces and learning to accept and respect their culture differences despite the language barrier and warfare. Surprisingly they also become friends but the abrupt conclusion is too stupid and meaningless, apparently imposed by the studio. The alternate ending is also terrible but better then the original one. In 1985, Wolfgang Petersen used the same idea in a futuristic environment in "Enemy Mine". My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Inferno no Pacífico" ("Hell in the Pacific")