Inchon (1981)

So I had my fun last week with Something Wicked (N.B: since watching the film I actually went out and brought the book!) but it's time to get back down to business and it is definitely business this week with Inchon, a 1981 "Epic" centred around the Battle of Inchon during the Korean War which is broadbrushly considered to be one of the worst films of 1981 and another potential candidate for one of the worst films I will cover yet. After sweeping *checks notes*; Worst Actor, Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay and Worst Director (ok that last one was a tie but still) at the Razzies of 1982, Inchon regularly finds itself cropping up in conversations and compendiums on the worst movies ever made and apparently has never been released on VHS*, DVD or Bluray. It also clocks in a bum numbing 2 hours 17 minutes... UGH WHY... which makes it far too long for my liking and therefore immediately losing points but not the longest movie I've covered yet. That dubious honour still sits with Race 3, a movie I fucking hated for, amongst a plethora of other reasons... because of how painstakingly long it was, so I'll be honest when I see at 2 hour+ run time against any of these movies, it's usually not a good first impression on me...

*-there are apparently some video bootlegs of a TV airing floating around on GoodlifeTV which is, ironically, the version I'm watching.

After immediately setting the tone by having North Korean soldiers brutally massacre entire villages... we are introduced to Major Frank Hallsworth (Ben Gazzara) who, upon hearing word that Communist forces have crossed the South Korean border, leaves behind his Korean girlfriend, Lim (Karen Kahn) and his adopted Korean family to rendezvous with American forces in Seoul, along the way hoping to locate and arrange for his estranged wife; Barbara to be transported back to America, however after calling in on her hotel he's unable to find her. At a fortification, he watches on as South Korean forces are hopelessly overpowered by the more militarily advanced North and makes contact with General Douglas MacArthur (Laurence Olivier) who arranges to meet with Frank in Korea. As news of the invasion spreads, South Korean citizens begin evacuating further south to Seoul. Caught up in the convoy is Frank's wife; Barbara Hallsworth (Jacqueline Bisset) who whilst onboard a taxi to the capital, gets caught up in the commotion when the migrating citizens are attacked from the air by Communist fighter planes, and has to assume control of the taxi herself when her driver is killed. Whilst crossing the Han River, she crosses paths with one of Frank's men, Sergeant August Henderson (Richard Roundtree) who hands her a weapon and tells her to head to Suwon airport to catch a plane out of the country. Before she can move on further though, she unwillingly becomes the chauffeur for 5 Korean children, after they let themselves into the taxi and refuse to leave. As they cross the bridge, the Communist forces arrive on the scene and the South Koreans are forced to destroy the bridge before they can make the crossing. Barbara and her taxi just barely make the crossing and have to be rescued by South Korean soldiers. Meanwhile after finding no sign of his wife at the Seoul Train Station, Frank makes the decision to return north in hopes of finding her unawake that August has just found her. After making it further south, Barbara runs into trouble when the taxi is stopped by Communist soldiers, albeit undercover, but one of the children speaking English tells Barbara they are soldiers, and with the child's help, Barbara uses the weapon she stashed in the glovebox to shoot the solider before escaping. Only for the taxi battery to die further down the road. Stranded, she is rescued when August returns, having not seen her since the river, and he helps to get Barbara and the kids back on the road, informing her that Frank never stopped worrying about her the whole time they were separated much to Barbara's disbelief. She informs August that she is instead heading further south to Pusan rather than to Suwon airport as it will be much safer for the children. Probably for the best actually as, at Suwon Airport, Frank arrives to discover a full blown dog fight going on, with the airport under attack by Communist forces. At Suwon, Frank learns from August that Barbara is continuing south, and after American forces chase off the South Koreans, General MacArthur lands in Suwon and meets up with Frank. (My historical knowledge is very much lacking here, so please cut me some slack, but;) Arranging to launch their first counter offensive and engage the Communists at Osan, the initial assault goes terribly and the Americans are forced back, but as a result the Communist forces are now scattered across the country and proceeding south rather than organising at one central point. Or so General MacArthur would have you believe. Explaining that they are heavily fortifying Pusan against invasion. On the subject of Pusan, some 25 miles north of there, Barbara and the children, and a young woman Barbara collected along the way, arrive at St. Mary's Mission, a UN outpost, and it's there that Barbara intends to leave the children behind continuing on alone, but they refuse to abandon her and insist they continue on with her. As the war develops quickly, much of the country falls to Communist occupation with the North Koreans taking control of Seoul and it's port; Inchon. With Pusan still resisting occupation and holding strong, the Americans hatch a plan to move north from Pusan and launch an assault on Seoul with naval support coming from Inchon by way of a marine landing. There is staunch resistance to the plan until General MacArthur seizes control of the briefing and sways the rest of the commanding officers. They set a date of 15th September for the operation to commence and General MacArthur assures the other commanding officers that the lighthouses of Inchon, crucial in order to achieve a successful landing, will be lit up on the night of the assault and appoints the newly appointed Colonel Hallsworth - Frank to be the leading officer of the brigade to seize control of the entry point lighthouse. Barbara and the children finally make it into Pusan where they are promptly accommodated in a posh family home - a home that just so happens to also be the home base for one Colonel Hallsworth... and Barbara and Frank are finally reunited. The reunion is incredibly frosty at first, but Frank and Barbara agree to put their problems behind them for the time being until Frank returns from the war. That evening, Frank departs during the night with August and a few others, making landfall at Inchon port and setting up camp in the trees, they are planning their attack on the lighthouse when Frank is joined by Lim (?) who has somehow managed to find her way all the way through enemy lines... undetected... and just so happens to rendezvous with Frank and his men... Anyway... as the UN naval fleet speeds across the Yellow Sea, Frank and his team begin their operation and seize control of the lighthouse, but they are interrupted when they learn that the channel has had mines laid down. Frank leaves one of his men behind in the lighthouse and proceeds to clear the channel of mines, with a bit of help from Lim's dad... but with the mines cleared and the channel lit up, General MacArthur proceeds to move his forces in whilst Frank and his team do their best to hold off the guards. However in the ensuing melee, Lim is fatally wounded and killed, and the lighthouse is damaged and goes out with the team unable to get it ignited again in time. Deciding that the landing on Inchon is now rendered impossible without the lighthouse, General MacArthur issues the command for the UN fleet to withdraw and in doing so, in a dictated message to President Truman, announces the operations failure as well as tendering his resignation but just as he finishes doing so, the lighthouse reignites and the fleet goes to full action stations! The following morning, having successfully penetrated the Inchon Channel, the Allied forces move in and take the port city of Inchon. In the closing scenes, Frank recovers Lim's body and reunites her with her father, Barbara says goodbye to the children as they enrol in school, and General MacArthur returns to Seoul a national hero.

I think I have to be upfront with you first of all and admit that war films are not really my thing. I just find them horrendously boring for the most part and I'm not 100% sure moralistically how I feel about the glamorisation of war. To be fair when they are done well, they are enjoyable but I generally wouldn't go out of my way to pick one to watch for like, fun. That being said for the most part I thought this was generally an alright movie. It had it's issues, it maybe went on for a little bit longer than it perhaps should of done, and although I don't have much of a frame of reference I don't think it really captured, historically, what the true depiction of events were surrounding the Battle of Inchon. But every movie has a degree of creative licence right, so I can forgive them that at least.

Let's address the biggest elephant in the room surrounding this movie, and perhaps the sole reason that a surviving broadcast is accessible from a predominantly religious television station: there is a very strong religious connotation to the entire thing. Unsurprising really when it was financed by The Unification Movement, but General MacArthur often refers to events being in "God's hands" and it being the "will of God" e.t.c when events work out in the favour of the Allied powers. Now I don't necessarily dispute that. Perhaps General MacArthur was a deeply religious man in real life, I haven't cared enough to do my own research, but it certainly serves as a guiding principle throughout the entire thing, and I think for me, being entirely atheist and unreligious that it just hits a bit of a sour note. I think the movie could have done without it. And to cast the Communists as a kind of spiritual evil and the Allies as a kind of spiritual good is 1) an oversimplification and 2) a bit self righteous. I don't think it needed the religious ceremony, you could have made just as good a movie without it.

And the second biggest elephant; Laurence Olivier is horrendously miscast in this in my humble opinion. Again, I'm not familiar with the historical source material here, but I find Laurence Olivier portrays a much more theatrical character here with grand, sweeping, dramatic speeches and strong overly dramatic mannerisms and character traits. He is far more larger than life than perhaps the role of General MacArthur should have been portrayed as, and there is definitely a similarity between his portrayal as a military General and as a kind of messiah figure. The closing scenes where he is treated as a hero upon his return don't really do anything to dampen that portrayal and it's almost as if he is worshiped by the Korean people upon returning from the Battle of Inchon... Maybe I'm understating the importance of the victory, to all intent and purpose it's considered to be the turning point in the Korean war, but I certainly felt from the portrayal that there was heavy messiah connotations attached to it.

Unfortunately I'm not really flush with praise for Ben Gazzara as Frank Hallsworth either. He came across as very stunted, very stiff and very vanilla for me. Almost felt like he was doing an impression of John Wayne in parts and I don't know if his character was supposed to be just an unemotionless soldier but that was the vibe I got from him. Conversely though I thought Jacqeline Bisset as Barbara Hallsworth did a pretty decent job and maybe the only person that actually brought some humanity to this movie. Although sparce, her development as a character and the attachment she built up with the children was a nice antithesis to all the war and the killing and if far more focus had been placed on that and her journey and less on the military characters and the development of the Inchon operation, I feel it genuinely might have been a better movie!

Although those criticisms aside, I generally enjoyed this. It did feel like it dragged on perhaps a little bit too long, but for the most part I was absorbed in the narrative and the movie did a decent job with the pacing, keeping the story moving nicely without rushing sections, although there were elements: like Barbara and the relationship with the children, that actually could have used more development when instead effort was focused on portraying the actions of the war. But I can't say it ever got boring really, and there was enough effort put in to build up to the next key point of the movie before delivering on that key point.

It's a bit difficult for me to really comment on the movie productionwise as I was watching a reasonably poor quality rip from a VHS recording straight from TV...! There were moments that seemed to cut off abruptly but I can't work out if that was owing to the finished production of the movie or just parts that were spliced from the TV broadcast. In terms of cinematography, I feel like enough was done to make it feel like a professionally shot movie and the soundtrack was appropriately grand and dramatic to at least try and build the presentation up to be a box office AAA movie, even if it obviously massively missed that mark. I don't feel it really lacked in any areas here and so far as I could tell it was perfectly acceptable.

Generally speaking, war movies are not for me. I can appreciate a good one but they aren't really my wheelhouse so I don't have much of a frame of reference but to be honest I thought this was OK. Accounting for all the things that I felt were wrong with it, I can't deny that I found it at least enjoyable enough and that it didn't feel like a burden sitting through it. I can't in good conscience say I'd ever really opt to watch it again, but in terms of it being one of the worst movies ever made? No. Sorry, but there are much, much worse movies than this one that came before it. It's deeply religious connotations are a real turn off, granted, or at least they were for me, but it wasn't offensively bad to the point that I felt cheated having watched it. You could do much worse than this one and trust me, I have. 2 out of 5.