Flight from Ashiya (1964)

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I'm surprised at all the tough reviews - this is essentially a movie about redemption.(Japanese) shipwreck survivors cling to a raft in choppy Pacific seas. 2 US rescue planes arrive. The first attempts a sea-landing near the raft, but crashes and the crew are killed.The second plane crew (Widmark, Brynner, Chakiris etc) now have to decide on making the same move but successfully, or whether to abandon the survivors to their watery fate instead (having just witnessed a failed fatal attempt by the other plane crew).Their decision is further complicated by each man already having "issues" (about being able to rescue people without messing up and views about the Japanese as a people etc).Their 'issues' are then separately explained in flashbacks, whilst we await their decision and outcome.Maybe the other reviewers are all young and don't have "issues" in life yet which they have to either overcome or accept.I liked the movie.

It's a routine story of three men in the Air Force Air Rescue Service in the post-war years. It reminded me of "Pearl Harbor" a bit. You may remember that epic CGI action sequences at the beginning and a super duper action scene at the end, with an extended black hole in the middle that dealt with a covert romantic triangle.Okay. Take that endless middle section, full of torment and opposite allegiances, like Buridan's ass that starved to death between two bales of hay because he couldn't make up his mind. Now chop that long middle part into three or four shorter parts and interpolate them at regular periods throughout the film. These are the back stories of the three men aboard a Grumman flying boat on a rescue mission in the North China Sea. And -- boy, are they dull.George Chakiris, the young pilot, is haunted by the memory of his rescue chopper causing an avalanche in the Alps and killing those he'd intended to rescue. Well, that's not a love story but you get the general picture. Chakiris is haunted by guilt and is uncertain about his flying skills. The second story belongs to Richard Widmark, the colonel in charge. He was a commercial pilot in World War II, captured along with his wife by the Japanese in the Filippines. She was denied medicine by her captors and she and her baby died in child birth. Widmark still hates Japs. "These things run deep," he mutters.Then we get Yul Brynner's tragedy. A paratrooper in North Africa, he falls for a lovely Arab girl but her family forbids the affair to continue. Brynner races to her house, shouts up at her window that he'll be back some day and they will be married. Then he must zoom off in a Jeep and join the others on the demolition team. But his girl defies her family and runs after the jeep. She finally catches up with them just after Brynner has lighted the fuses that will blow a brick bridge to smithereens. By happenstance -- or Kismet in her case -- she comes to a halt just under the bridge, flings her arms open wide, and shouts, "MICHEL", to Brynner. Boom. She disappears in a puff of smoke like a stage magician.If you think all this misery is too much, you still have to suffer through the chief action of the film, of which we get glimpses from time to time. Widmark, Brynner, and Chakiris are still flying that Grumman through a powerful storm to rescue a raft filled with Japanese.Will Widmark hesitate to try a landing in an impossibly heavy and confused sea? Will Brynner talk him into it? Will Widmark finally yield? Does he successfully land the plane? Does he break his arm in doing so? Must Chakiris then take over the controls and get the overloaded flying boat skillfully off the sea and into the air? Are all the crises resolved at the end? You'll have to watch it to find out.I wish it were possible to say that the action scenes -- the flying through the storm, the scenes on the raft in the tossing swells, the Japanese bombing of the Filippines, the plowing of the Grumman through the whipped-up sea, were exciting but they're really not. The airplanes are clearly models and not done very well. The raft scenes were shot in the studio tank. The special effects are hardly an improvement on director Michael Anderson's much superior "The Dam Busters", made in 1955.I hate to sound sour about this but the performances seem lazy or inept as well. Of course it's difficult for any actor to overcome a stilted script. But to see a mature Yul Brynner stumbling around with a cane, trying to speak English to a young woman who speaks only Arabic and French, and to hear him using slang words like "crazy," as if he were fifteen years old, is almost grotesque. And here he is with the other members of the combat engineers fighting a delaying action and he and the rest wear the spiffiest, cleanest, most finely pressed uniforms known to man or beast. Their helmets are as glossy as their boots. Chakiris, a good dancer, was never much of an actor, and this is one of Widmark's most lackadaisical performances.See it if you must but it's not very good.

The film is about 3 men flying rescue in the Pacific, just after WWII. A Japanese ship has gone down in a storm, with the survivors clinging to rafts in storm tossed seas.Airplane aficionado's will like the Martin PBM Mariner footage of flying through the storm to attempt to find the survivors. Yes there is a lot of flashbacks for Richard Widmark's character, as he wrestles with the decision as whether to attempt a landing in the storm tossed seas or not. However, in fairness he was a civilian pilot married to a beautiful photographer, when both were captured by the Japanese and place in an internment (read "work until you die") camp.Japanese soldiers are usually depicted as introspective souls that carry out their duties only after tortuous reflections on their lives as in "Bridge Over the River Kwai". This movie didn't follow that formula, but didn't get into the real details of camp life either.Yule Bryner doesn't appear to be Japanese, but then he didn't like the King of Siam either. His character was in French occupied North Africa (Algeria?), and who knows how to accurately depict that torturous time period and mess.All, in all not a bad picture, and one I remember enjoying staying up late to watch in my childhood in the late 60's, early 70's.

The screenplay tells the story of three men ,two of whom fought during WW2.Now they all work for Air Rescue Service with a commendable motto.The problem is that the film is far from being commendable.During a mission,Widmark's dark memories come back to haunt him and ,in the middle of a sea rescue,we're offered a full flashback :he once loved a woman (Shirley Knight),and that is supposed to make us comprehend why he hates Japanese.But if it is bad ,a second flashback (dealing with Yul Brynner's past) is still worse.In a chocolate box North Africa ,he falls in love with an Arab girl -who barely looks Arab anyway.As George Chakiris did not fight during WW2(see above),the director spares us a third flashback,phew! This is a flick where even technical competence is at question and that is very ill-conceived.