Okinawa (1952) User Reviews

Worthy of an epic

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 5 March 2013]

The battle for Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands just south of Japan, trailing off Kyushu like a jet stream was the final battle of World War II in the Pacific. Commanding the Navy Task Force was Raymond Spruance the victor at Midway and it was the largest flotilla ever put together, over 1500 ships. Not to mention the Army and Marine forces who did the fighting on land. As this was Japan's back door so to speak they fought with ferocious intensity with full use of the Kamikaze suicide planes.

The story of Okinawa needed an epic film like The Longest Day. Instead we got a hastily put together film with a lot of cliché stock characters from war films of the era. Pat O'Brien stars as the skipper of the destroyer on which this film's story is told and Richard Denning is his executive officer.

They may be top billed but O'Brien and Denning take second place in screen time to the crew of one of the naval guns on the destroyer. The crew consists of Rhys Williams, Richard Benedict, James Dobson and Cameron Mitchell who dumbed down his command of the English language to the level of Leo Gorcey. The crew is mostly sitting around waiting for the Kamikaze attacks which they know will come.

Okinawa is not a horribly bad film, but with an epic title like that it sure falls short of the mark. The Army, Navy, and Marines who fought there deserved something much better.

Low rent, but watchable

[gordonl56 · 6/10 · 2 May 2016]

OKINAWA 1952

This lower end budget war film was put out by the B unit at Columbia Pictures. The film is about a gun crew on a U.S. Navy Destroyer Escort at the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945. The invasion was the first of the Japanese home islands. Needless to say the Japanese were not going to go softly. They launched masses of Kamikaze suicide aircraft at the invasion fleet.

The film follows the crew of one of the 5inch gun turrets on the U.S.S. Blake. The men are, Cameron Mitchell, Richard Benedict, James Dobson and Rhys Williams. The officers in charge of the ship are played by, Pat O'Brien as the Captain and Richard Denning as the XO.

The ship starts as part of the fleet bombarding the shore as the landing takes place. Then they are transferred out to be part of the radar picket line. The picket line is to give early warning of any Japanese aircraft. The carriers can then direct fighters to intercept the enemy before they reach the transports etc.

The Japanese however do not always play according to plan. They sometimes decide to take out the radar pickets. The ships are alone without the fire support of other ships. (36 ships including 12 destroyers were lost with 120 ships damaged) The kamikazes piled on and the action became heated.

The gun crews become exhausted with barely any time off alert. Gunner Mitchell is the gambler of the group, and has been spending his time winning everyone's beer ration. Also in the crew is Benedict the ladies man, Dobson the smart one and the old man of the group, Rhys Willaims. Any free time is spent sleeping or taking about what to do after the war.

The Japanese keep coming and the ship is damaged after a hit by a kamikaze. The ship is lucky that the aircraft's bomb did not explode. The Captain, O'Brien manhandles the unwanted gift to the side and pushes it over into the drink. The list of dead and injured grows as the ship fights off repeated attacks. Gunner Dobson badly burns his hands during one of the raids and is replaced by galley hand, Rudy Robles. The attacks finally end but not before Rhys Williams is killed.

There is a running gag through the film about what gunner Mitchell plans to do with all the beer rations he has won. Unfortunately for him the entire lot is destroyed during one of the kamikaze attacks.

Taken as the low budget film that it is, it makes for a decent time-waster. The film uses quite a lot of stock battle footage which for the most part is edited into the narrative rather well. (The British pom-poms shown being a minor glitch) The film has a runtime of only 67 minutes and fills the time at a nice pace.

The director here was long time B-Film helmsman, Leigh Jason.

Boring

[drjgardner · 4/10 · 30 May 2019]

This film doesn't do justice to the Battle for Okinawa. I highly recommend "Battle of Okinawa in Color".

Save your time....

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 14 February 2015]

Tonight I tried watching "Okinawa" and wow was I disappointed. While the film should have been an inspiring epic with a cast of thousands, it's a crappy, cheap little film with a cast of dozens! In other words, although the invasion of Okinawa took thousands and thousands of soldiers, the filmmakers thought they'd cleverly avoid this expense. So, they used LOTS of stock footage of the invasion and has a group of bad actors (or at least actors with really bad dialog) ham it up and pretend that a war is on....though they really do NOTHING! Scene after scene literally consist of folks talking about the war and describing what's happening!! They really do very little and the film looks almost like what a war film by Ed Wood would look like! Just terrible in every way and not worth your time or effort.

Wasted talent on this stinker

[ddesau-245-169674 · 1/10 · 17 September 2014]

Wow- This is the first time I have ever seen this movie and I've seen nearly every war movie made.

Why did they even bother - this whole movie totally sucks - the acting is wooden and 3rd rate - the action totally blows - with the exception of actual war scenes and this was a total waste of film.

Please find the film and burn it - it is the biggest waste of time and money ever. And here I thought that Ed Wood created stupid movies - this one is the worst. What was anyone thinking when they wrote this much less filmed it.

I consider it one of the worst war movies ever - and that is saying something.

A disgrace to all U.S. Navy Sailors

[RBQuady-1 · 1/10 · 3 June 2015]

My Father, LCDR Frank Bernard Quady, USN, was killed aboard the USS Bunker Hill by a double kamikaze attack. For my Father, I say this movie was so bad I quit about half an hour into it.

The guy who played the sailor with the cap pulled down ridiculously was absolutely disgusting. No sailor would wear his cap on like that except possibly at home cleaning out the gutters.

Note: This guy was the "star" of the film – the part that I watched. I couldn't force myself to watch any more.

I grew up in the '50s in Coronado, CA and this movie never played there, as far as I know. I never heard of this flick.

I'll have to rent it sometime and watch only the official U.S. Navy footage, fast forwarding past the stupid sailor, whoever he is or was.

I didn't see any U.S. Naval personnel listed as advisers. They surely would have nixed it.

One more thing about the stupid sailor. He was a disgrace to all sailors. Sailors are the heart of the Navy.

Exploitative.

[rmax304823 · 3/10 · 25 April 2012]

I don't want to carry on too long about this shoddy film because it isn't worth it. Okinawa was an important objective towards the end of the Pacific War, a sizable island intended for use as a staging area for the invasion of Japan. It was a terrible battle fought under terrible conditions. Mud was everywhere, and civilians died by the thousands. It was one of the few battles in which the Navy suffered greater casualties than the Army and Marines ashore. The main reason for the difference lay in the first massive use of suicide airplanes, loaded with explosives, called Kamikazes. They managed to sink or put out of action more than 33 American ships as well as some others belonging to Allied forces. And they inflicted damage on still more. About 6,000 naval officers and men were casualties.

This movie exploits the Battle of Okinawa. We watch a destroyer attacked by flights of Kamikazes every once in a while, in between long sessions of the usual minor conflicts and bantering of the crew. The bantering sounds more desperate than funny. The overall impression is that someone realized that a good deal of footage of the attacks had recently been released but not yet used in a feature film. So a few dumb clichés were slapped together to build a framing story in which the newsreel footage could be interpolated.

I was disappointed -- almost ashamed -- when I saw this the first time, about twenty years ago. I've watched it again since then and it hasn't improved. It's an insult to the men, women, and children who were involved.

Small movie about a big action

[shoobe01 · 8/10 · 16 August 2014]

I don't get the hate for this movie. It's not cheap, it's deliberately small, focused and about as emotionally involved as you can get with a small crew of men acting in a 1940s way. I almost wish we hadn't had the bridge scenes with the command crew, and had to entirely take it from the point of view of the gun crew. That's how history happens; people go about their little part, and get these rare little views of the big action.

I was unusually not disturbed by the cookie cutter characters. We rarely see how they really are, but instead get their public face, to their crewmen while at war. People fall into bravado and storytelling just like this. There were moments of doubt and fear that showed this off I think, very well.

Stock footage, sure. But only rarely did I notice the grain mismatching, and they spent an awful lot of effort to make it blend into the narrative. My favorite of these is about 50 minutes in when one of the characters grabs onto a fitting on the gun to lean out and look at a heavily damaged passing ship. They did this because in the foreground of the stock footage is a sailor doing just that. It brought the stock into the story, and is such unseen stock of such specific damage you could never have simulated it with new footage, especially in the 50s.

I was especially pleased with the sets. I guess they are sets due to lighting and so on, but the interior of the gun mount looks absolutely perfect and realistic, and absolutely unexpectedly so. It really helped with the verisimilitude of the whole endeavor.

Not Sure if Its Short Runtime Is a Good or Bad Thing

[mehfre · 1/10 · 29 June 2023]

This is a 67-minute "movie" filled with tons of stock footage. It's full of the usual cliches both in characters and dialogue. Ostensibly about the battle of Okinawa, it is, in fact, about a destroyer on picket duty around the island. It has absolutely nothing to do with Okinawa despite its title and could have been set on any number of islands, even fictional ones. There's no tension, no drama, and very little action (much of which is stock footage anyway). This movie was clearly made on the cheap and it really shows. So, on one hand, its runtime of barely over an hour makes the viewer feel like they're getting gypped, but on the other hand, the agony is over quickly.

A not so bad war film.

[searchanddestroy-1 · 1 May 2009]

First, I would like to say that it was a great surprise for me to see the director's name: Leigh Jason himself. This guy made only comedies during the 40's. And his last feature is a war movie. Incredible, isn't it? Of course, there is lots of talk, but it gives a pretty good study of characters. For this kind of production, I mean. Pat O'Brien is as fine as usual, Cameron Mitchell gives here one of his first appearances on a screen. Well, I guess so...I'll check on IMDb. But I would say that this feature is a little too long, even if the running time is only 67 minutes. I know, it seems incredible. Perhaps is it too much talkative?

Action scenes, only at the end and focusing on Japanese kamikazes, are taken from stock shots, essentially.

Produced by Wallace Mac Donald. Good feature, and rare.

Error

[bornagain710-331-212635 · 5/10 · 5 May 2019]

Monroe in movie was not possible in 1945. She startedin the 1950's. Sailors like it though

I liked this movie

[mikaytch · 8/10 · 1 April 2021]

I was in the navy during the vietnam war. I was deployed to vietnam twice and served on several different navy ships. The characters in this movie would have fit right in with the rest of us.