The Three In One War Epic

Rating: 6/10 (27 November 2015)

With predictable plot turns and actors straight out of central casting this film, while beautifully presented, suffers from what appears to be hatchet job in the cutting room.
The story of a first generation Italian American Olympic athlete, turned war hero just tries to be too much. We begin with a bad boy in 1930s Southern California, who narrowly avoids reform school by finding his talent as a track runner. After a good showing in the Munich Olympic Games, our protagonist enlists and finds himself over the Pacific in a B52.
The crew encounters trouble when forced to use a shoddy plane to complete it's mission, and crashes with the help of some bullets from a Zero attack. In a short scene with stereotypical fly-boys getting shot up and dying in a dramatic fashion, engine failure forces a water landing in shark infested waters and only three survivors climb aboard lifeboats.
This, if properly done could have been a movie all by itself. But this condensed version really doesn't work. The audience never has the chance to get to know this plucky crew and really has no reason to care about them.
Next we have a long battle with the elements and a lack of food and fresh water as the three, who soon become two, languish in the open sea for a month and a half. Again we have a whole movie here if done well. But this portion attempts to pluck at nonexistent heart strings and we just are left waiting for what comes next.
What comes next is our third movie, as the two enfeebled men are taken aboard a Japanese ship and tossed into an internment camp for the rest of the war. A mean spirited Japanese Sargent beats our man mercilessly as he successfully maintains his integrity and never allows the Japanese to use his celebrity to their advantage.
There you have it, three movies rolled up in a little ball splashed across the screen in two hours. One gets the impression that Angelina Jole Pitt had a lot more to say about this man, but lost a war with the studio to keep the film to the current two and a half hours standard maximum.
What we do have is a fresh, first person perspective, dead on sets, good sound, lighting, and beautiful photography. In fact rarely does a period piece get presented better than this one. Ms. Jole Pitt may have lost the battle for editorial control, but she still gave us a film that looks, sounds, and feels so good it's worth watching in spite of monumental shortcomings.