r/WarMovies

I used to believe going back in time was the ultimate way to set things right and make everything better. But in this movie, an officer aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier which gets trapped in a mysterious light and travels back in time to right before the attack on Pearl Harbor completely broke that fantasy. He said that if you alter the past, you might not even exist in the present, and honestly, the more I think about it, the more he has a point.

This is a scene where a captured Japanese pilot, holding a woman hostage, becomes stunned upon hearing the history of the Pearl Harbor attack from an American officer, right before he is shot dead. The Japanese pilot was played by late Soon-Tek Oh, a Korean-American actor. Being a fellow Korean, I feel a special connection to him. I also read somewhere that Kirk Douglas once asked to reshoot a scene because he felt Oh’s performance was even more intense and powerful than his own.

Led by the eccentric Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), a fleet of U.S. Army helicopters assaults a Vietcong-controlled coastal village. To induce psychological terror and boost his men's morale, Kilgore blasts Richard Wagner’s "Ride of the Valkyries" through giant speakers mounted on the choppers as they rain fire down on the village. Although I was disappointed when I saw it in theaters because the lead actor was underwhelming and Marlon Brando barely had any screen time, this scene and the other combat sequences were more than enough to convey the futility of war.