The Fighter Pilot (2013)

• Year: 2013
• Released: 21 Dec 2013
• Country: Japan
• Adwords: 10 wins & 4 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404217/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_fighter_pilot
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p,
• Language: Japanese
• MPA Rating: N/A
• Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery
• Runtime: 144 min
• Writer: Takashi Yamazaki, Tamio Hayashi, Naoki Hyakuta
• Director: Takashi Yamazaki
• Cast: Jun’ichi Okada, Haruma Miura, Mao Inoue
• Keywords: world war ii, kamikaze,

7.3/10

The Fighter Pilot Storyline

26 year old Kentaro discovers his biological grandfather died as a kamikaze pilot during WW2. He and his sister begin an investigation into what kind of person he was, interviewing men who fought with him. There follows the story of Japanese Navy Air Service Platoon Sergeant Miyabe, as told by four of the men who knew him best. Intricately woven the film follows him through Pearl Harbor, the Midway Battle and the Battle for Okinawa. When he finally loses his will and respect for life he enrolls in the Special Attack Force and passes his responsibility to return to his wife and infant daughter on to a younger pilot. An engaging tale of a man brave enough to challenge accepted ways of thinking.—kwedgwood@hotmail.com

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The Fighter Pilot Movie Reviews

A sympathetic look at suicide bombers…no wait, come back…

Despite being one of the better films hiding among the titles on Netflix, ‘The Eternal Zero’ doesn’t seem to have attracted much attention in the west. Given that it’s a film that casts a sympathetic look at Japan’s kamikaze pilots though that’s not exactly surprising. It’s already been subject to a wealth of controversy by critics in Japan and abroad, especially as there’s one pivotal scene that compares them (favourably) to modern day suicide bombers.

This is a shame because at it’s heart, ‘The Eternal Zero’ is a defiantly anti-war movie and a genuinely moving one. Beginning at a funeral, it focuses on siblings Kentaro and Keiko Oishi and their quest to find out more about the Grandfather they never knew. They soon discover that their relative Kyuzo Miyabe was a fighter pilot that died in a kamikaze attack on an aircraft carrier but throughout the war, he was almost universally hated by his fellow pilots. They meet with several veterans who all accuse Miyabe of cowardice for avoiding combat at any cost and after being shouted at by several angry old men, are understandably keen to throw in the towel. Then they decide to go for one last interview and things start to get more complex.

From there, the film unfolds Citizen Kane-style through interviews and flashbacks. It turns out Oishi was in truth a brilliant pilot, but one who also desperately wanted to live and return home to his wife. This made him thoroughly unpopular in a culture which at the time venerated the honourable sacrifice, but it also makes him something of a cypher character. Nobody in their right mind would want to smash themselves into a warship in a burning jet plane after all, so how does someone come to be persuaded to do that? And could it happen to any of us or was it something that only Imperial Japan could convince it’s people to do?

What follows is a moving story of courage disguised as cowardice and a man who firmly believed in life at all cost rather than pointless deaths. There’s a few brilliant scenes where characters juggle certain death against uncertain life, not least where Oishi convinces a fellow pilot not to turn back for a suicide run, only to wind up suffering an even worse fate because of it.

On a technical level too the film does a great job in recreating aerial combat through CGI (a practical necessity given the lack of functioning Zeros nowadays). The focus isn’t on the combat though and anyone expecting constant dogfights will be disappointed. The Battle of Midway scene for example ends all too soon and often, we see the aftermath of battle rather than the battle itself. It makes up for it though in the human drama and when Oishi finds himself flying escort to his own students and has to watch them squander their lives pointlessly, it’s both visually impressive and moving.

Anyone who still harbours resentment for the Japanese and their actions during WW2 however will still hate this movie. There’s no mention of the atrocities of Nanking or the mistreatment of POWs for example, but then they’re not the focus of the film. This is about impressionable young men being brainwashed into throwing their lives away and their ancestors struggling to come to terms with it. In that sense, Kentaro and Keiko are representative of modern Japan itself; they don’t have to approve of their own history in order to sympathise with it. This is a great film, but it’ll provoke a heated argument or two, a fact which it foreshadows in a night out that goes disastrously wrong.

One of the Best Japanese Films

I would put this in one of my top favorite films. It’s as good as “Letters from Iwo Jima”

Was the lives worth it for the future of Japan?

It’s kind of like “The Notebook” meets “Pearl Harbor”. (well, better than those two films!) If you had to choose love between your own family and country/men; many had to face the same dilemma. People can have different perspective whether one is a coward or a real hero.

I’m not sure how I missed this film when it first came out, but I recently watched it and I was engaged throughout the whole film.

The director Takashi Yamazaki also makes really large scale Hollywood-like production quality.

There’s many war films out there, but this one is actually refreshing and meaningful. It really hits hard on the impact and value of life – how precious it really is.

I really liked how it brought up the controversy/showed and compared how people/kids of modern Japan also judged the way they saw the kamikaze pilots who fought for them. Some people argue they were just crazy brainwashed terrorists, but not everything is just simply black and white.

The film stars Juichi Okada, a famous former Japenese boy band group member called V6, who plays the main pilot. I was surprised he could act so well, as he was amazing in the film.

I liked how the film had that small subtle connection/twist of the old man with the security cameras in his home/samurai sword; you’d only get it if you were paying attention.

I highly recommend this film. It’s definitely one of the quality war films made.

Simply excellent.

Deeply touching story, amazing acting, excellent FX and war recreations. The most important is the human perspective, the individuals outside the wrong or right of the history books. You will cry seeing this movie, and its fine. I do not agree with other reviewer about being a movie to “justify” Japan. Is a movie about persons, their lives and struggles in the most horrible point of human history and human nature. I took this movie, as many other war movies, as a message to the people so they understand this is the horror of war and how it affects people like you, this would happen to you or your people, this is what happened, happens and will happen. Outside the big story of battles, strategy, the macro history, the little stories of the persons, no matters which side. I’ll save this movie next to Letters from Iwo Jima and Ünsere Mutter, Ünsere Vätter.