Inchon (1981)

Director:

Terence Young

Writers:

Robin Moore (screenplay) and
Laird Koenig (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

17 September 1982 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | History | War

Tagline:

LOVE. DESTINY. HEROES. War Changes Everything.

Plot:

A noisy and absurd re-telling of the great 1950 invasion of Inchon during the Korean War which was masterminded by General Douglas MacArthur. |

Plot Keywords:

Invasion | Inchon | Douglas Macarthur | Korean War | General

Awards:

4 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Laurence Olivier	...	Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Jacqueline Bisset	...	Barbara Hallsworth
Ben Gazzara	...	Maj. Frank Hallsworth
Toshirô Mifune	...	Saito-San
Richard Roundtree	...	Sgt. Augustus Henderson
David Janssen	...	David Feld (scenes deleted)
Kung-won Nam	...	Park
Gabriele Ferzetti	...	Turkish Brigadier
Rex Reed	...	Longfellow (scenes deleted)
Sabine Sun	...	Marguerite
Dorothy James	...	Jean MacArthur
Karen Kahn	...	Lim
Lydia Lei	...	Mila
James T. Callahan	...	Gen. Almond
Rion Morgan	...	Pipe journalist

Also Known As:

Inchon! (South Korea) (working title)
Oh, Inchon! (South Korea) (working title)

Runtime:

South Korea:140 min | USA:105 min (edited version) | USA:140 min | USA:140 min (premiere version)

Country:

South Korea | USA

Language:

English | Korean

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Inchon, South Korea

Company:

One Way Productions

Trivia:

When location filming ran past the original production schedule, Olivier insisted on being paid his "bonus salary" in weekly cash payments, delivered to him as briefcases full of money, flown to the location by helicopter

Goofs:

Anachronisms: The film is supposed to take place at the beginning of the Korean War in 1950 even though the extras in the press room scenes all have late-1970s clothing and haircuts.

Quotes:

[opening title card]
Titles: This is not a documentary of the war in Korea but a dramatized study of the effect of war on a group of people. Where dramatic license has been deemed necessary, the authors have taken advantage of this license to dramatize the subject.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Weirdsville (2007)

Major disappointment!

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.