Delusions of Adequacy

Finally got to see it, and I can see why Hollywood is embarrassed by it:  it depicts Americans as heroes and liberators and as victims of Japanese brutality in WW2 rather than complicit in it (as even "Pearl Harbor" managed to imply).  Worse, from Hollywood's POV, it portrays the American military as competent and heroic, rather than as drug-crazed rapists and cold-blooded murderers -- or as helpless victims, which is usually the best American soldiers can hope for from their Hollywood treatment.

Unfortunately, it's also something of a lost opportunity.  It never quite combusts; there is little of the tension that the men who actually took part in the assault must have felt; the tacked-on love story feels tacked-on.  It falls far short of the technical marks set by Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers.  The Kiefer Sutherland-starring To End All Wars is a far more compelling depiction of the horrors of a Japanese POW camp.

Still, I'll probably buy it on DVD, because I want to encourage the production of more movies that show Americans as they usually are when at war: fierce, strong, and decent.

Of course, we're quite often that way at peace, too.