The challenge
when discussing this abysmal WWII saga isn’t explaining why it’s a bad movie,
but picking the best examples to illustrate how it’s a bad movie. Perhaps it’s
the way the first seven minutes of this brief action flick almost exclusively
comprise stock footage. Or perhaps it’s the way the filmmakers regularly
disrupt any sense of 1940s verisimilitude by awkwardly interjecting ’70s soul
music, such as Edwin Starr’s furious anthem “War.” Or perhaps it’s the way star
Jim Brown frequently slips into anachronistic dialogue straight out of a
low-rent blaxploitation joint, as when his enlisted-man character berates a
racist superior officer thusly: “Now you wait a minute, my man—you do whatever
you want to me when we get outta here, but until then, don’t mess with my
life!” Set and shot in the Philippines, the discombobulated and dull Pacific Inferno concerns a group of
American POWs forced by Japanese captors to dive for sunken treasure. Among
many galling logical lapses, the captors somehow have extensive personnel files
on their prisoners, hence their discovery that characters played by Brown,
Richard Jaeckel, and others are experienced divers. One would laugh at this degree
of cinematic ineptitude if Pacific
Inferno were sufficiently interesting to provoke any reaction beyond
boredom. Better to keep a safe distance and ignore that fact that Brown did
this to himself, seeing as how he’s listed as an executive producer. Hopefully
he enjoyed some pleasant time in the sun between takes.
Pacific Inferno: SQUARE
It's my theory that this movie was meant to be a contemporary (to the 1970's, anyway) thriller, but someone in the costume department got a large lot of World War 2 era Japanese uniforms on sale, so they decided to make it a wartime film. Unfortunately, they didn't bother to change anything else, so the American characters sported 70's fashion and hair. That makes about as much sense as anything else in the picture.
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