Release Date: May 4, 1981/Sept. 17, 1982. Running Time: 137 minutes/105 minutes. Screenplay: Laird Koenig, Robin Moore. Producer: Mitsuharu Ishii. Director: Terence Young.
THE PLOT:
June 25, 1950. Having secured both approval and tanks from the Soviet Union, the North Korean army crashes across the 38th Parrallel. They crush the token South Korean resistance as they move inexorably south toward Seoul.
Barbara Hallsworth (Jacqueline Bisset) is warned to evacuate immediately. She picks up five South Korean children and drives south with them, racing the war to find safety. Meanwhile, her husband, Major Frank Hallsworth (Ben Gazzara) is called into action advising the South Korean defense, though he is reminded that the United States is technically neutral.
The U. S. won't stay neutral for long. After the United Nations condemns the invasion, General Douglas MacArthur (Laurence Olivier) is put in charge of UN forces. Initially, there are concerns about his age, with journalist David Feld (David Janssen) noting that the general is 71 - concerns the early months of the war do little to allay, as it's all the general can do to manage a retreat to defensible territory.
Once the initial onslaught has stalled, however, MacArthur comes up with a plan to turn the tide of the war: A perilous landing at Inchon, designed to split the North Korean invasion force and push them back across the border!
SIR LAURENCE OLIVIER AS DOUGLAS MACARTHUR:
Olivier famously, somewhat hilariously, confessed to accepting the role for one reason: "Money, dear boy." It goes without saying that he is extraordinarily miscast, and the heavy makeup that attempts to force a resemblance to the historical Douglas MacArthur is far too visible in close-ups. Olivier, who was never averse to a bit of ham, goes wildly over the top in a pair of scenes in which he first sells and then briefs his advisers on the plan for the Inchon landings. He alternates between shouting and whispering, his accent wandering all over the map as he emphasizes all the wrong syllables. We're meant to see a man whose energy and presence sways his doubters; instead, it looks more as if he is having a stroke on camera.
Outside of those two scenes, Olivier isn't really as bad as contemporary reviews indicated, with him putting a sincere and visible effort. The true problem is the script, which is so reverential you could be mistaken for thinking it was about a religious figure rather than a military one. The real MacArthur was, at his best, a brilliant general... but he was also a self-promoting egomaniac who occasionally blundered due to an inability to even conceive of being wrong. By leaving out his failings, the film actually does him a disservice. Because we don't see his faults, his triumphs mean nothing. The movie's MacArthur is bland and dull - two words that neither supporters nor detractors could ever have used to describe the real man.
Oh, and he invokes God more than your average Presbyterian minister. Yes, MacArthur was religious. But this MacArthur spends as much time talking about God as he does planning strategy (and that's only a very slight exaggeration). I'd say I had to check that this wasn't a faith-based film... but given that this was financed by The Unification Church, I suppose it sort of is one.
OTHER CHARACTERS:
Maj. Frank Hallsworth: At the tail end of the 1970s, actor Ben Gazzara went overseas to shoot a movie on location that reminded the few paying attention that, given the right material, he could really act. That movie was Saint Jack, shot in 1978. A year later, he again flew overseas to shoot Inchon... presumably as a reminder to the few who were paying attention that, given the wrong material, he could absolutely recite his lines in a monotone to collect a paycheck.
Contemporary reviewers aimed their sharpest barbs at Olivier, but at least he was trying. Gazzara is mentally checked out, and he's not even trying to hide it. He has zero screen chemistry with either of his love interests, and not much more with his army buddy (Richard Roundtree). He just sort of meanders through the film with a blank expression, presumably counting the minutes until he wraps filming. In fairness, he doesn't get any real character to portray. He's just there; and by "there," I mean wherever the film decides to focus, regardless of whether it involves him seemingly teleporting from one part of Korea to another between scenes.
Barbara Hallsworth: When Time Ran Out. Inchon. Wild Orchid. Jacqueline Bisset may have been an actress of limited range, but she was never actively bad... So exactly how did she end up with so many jaw-dropping flops on her resume? That and her period-inappropriate wardrobe aside, she's perfectly fine. I'd go so far as to say that the subplot that sees her driving five Korean urchins south to safety more or less carries the film's first half (which itself says something about the movie). Pointing to some of the film's structural problems: It's a major part of the story that Barbara is Frank's wife and that they are divorcing... yet it's more than half the movie before she and Gazzara share a single second of screen time!
Sgt. Augustus Henderson: Richard Roundtree, stuck in the thankless role of Frank's "black best friend," gives by far the movie's best performance. He's relaxed and recognizably human, with flashes of humor - a quality this movie desperately lacks (save for the unintentional kind). A scene in which he helps Barbara with engine trouble while interacting with her young charges is charming despite the recycled dialogue, and Roundtree and Bisset actually have decent screen rapport... So naturally, they are never seen on screen together again after this point.
Saito: Lest Olivier be the only great actor to embarrass himself, the legendary Toshiro Mifune appears as a Japanese expat living in Inchon. Saito is a World War II veteran who has embraced his Buddhist faith and renounced violence. His young daughter has become involved with Frank, and he and Frank are good enough friends that he apparently has no problem with this married fifty-year-old American "spending time with" his twentyish daughter. Mifune only has a few scenes, which is just as well - His phonetic English does nothing for the scenes he's in. Even so, it seems like a missed opportunity to introduce a family that would spend months living under occupation, only to fail to follow them at all.
David Feld: This was David Janssen's final movie role, but that comes with an asterisk; his scenes are present in the 1981 preview version, which is the basis of the television version being reviewed, but he was removed from the 105-minute theatrical release. This was probably one of the few good decisions made with regard to this film. Janssen's appearance screams "late '70s" in a film set in 1950, complete with a half-buttoned shirt revealing more gray chest hair than anyone wants to see. The only character he has any significant interaction with is a theatre critic played by an even more out-of-place Rex Reed. Finally, Janssen's ill health is distractingly evident; though he was less than fifty, he looks older than Olivier, who was more than seventy, and who was also in poor health during production.
"SAY SOMETHING NICE":
Inchon represents a sincere attempt to recreate the early days of the Korean War, and there are effective moments sprinkled throughout. A scene in which the invading North Koreans massacre a large group of civilians is based on an actual incident. Other scenes show the North Koreans impressing civilians into their army, giving them the choice to either fight for them or die. In these moments, you can see that a truly powerful film could have been made from this material. This isn't that movie... But it wants to be, and I have to give it credit for that.
Oh, and as you would expect from a Jerry Goldsmith score, the soundtrack is excellent.
"SO... EXACTLY WHAT WERE THEY ON?":
Can't Stop the Music, the first Golden Raspberry "winner," had hilariously awful opening credits. Inchon goes it one better by opening with a hilariously awful opening disclaimer:
"This is not a documentary of the war in Korea but a dramatized story of the effect of war on a group of people. Where dramatic license has been deemed necessary, the authors have taken advantage of this license to dramatize the subject."
Where gratitude has been deemed necessary, I would like to take advantage of this gratitude to thank the filmmakers for clarifying this. So I express my gratitude upon the filmmakers with my sincere and grateful thanks.
THE UNKINDEST CUT:
Inchon has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray, leaving me to base this review on a cable television version that runs 137 minutes. To all intents, this is the version that played at the movie's 1981 Washington D. C. premiere, minus a few censorship trims.
Despite praise from President Ronald Reagan, the premiere was poorly received and was drastically re-edited for its 1982 release. The theatrical cut ran 105 minutes, completely removed David Janssen from the film, and rearranged scenes (reportedly with no regard for continuity) to cover other edits. Given that even the long version suffers from choppy editing, I suspect the truncated version bordered on incoherence.
OTHER MUSINGS:
Inchon has frequently been labeled the worst war movie ever made. I have to assume that statement is missing a qualifier such as "major" or "big-budget," because it is in no way worse than several Italian-financed 1970s cheapies that I've seen. Then again, those films were made with the spare change found lurking under seat cushions, while this film cost a staggering $46 million. That's a good $10 million more than the studio-destroying Heaven's Gate. And unlike Heaven's Gate, where you could see the money on screen, Inchon mostly looks like a TV movie of the week!
Director Terence Young never seemed to work that well with big budgets. His two best Bond pictures were the first ones, which existed on a far smaller scale than the series that followed. His other best film, 1967's Wait Until Dark, is a faithful adaptation of a stage play that occurs almost entirely within the confines of a single apartment. With Young, it seems as if tighter resources yielded better results.
So it should be little surprise that, given practically limitless resources, Young delivers a genuinely shabby-looking picture. There's a moment in which Barbara Hallsworth, during her Very Bad Road Trip, shields the children's eyes from the sight of a corpse. We hear the sound of insects overlaid, but there isn't a single bug anywhere near the body. Scenes in which North Koreans attack civilians all follow the same pattern: The sounds of gunfire, followed (in at least one case, preceded by) extras falling to the ground. Oh, and maybe an explosion - some of which look amazingly phony.
If you scanned the "Characters" section above, you may have noticed something about this Korean War drama: Namely, none of the major characters are Korean! We see scenes of Korean extras being mowed down. A minor Korean character is very briefly pressed into service by the North Korean army before being rescued by Ben Gazzara. Couldn't that character's role have been expanded? I'd find his story a lot more compelling than the trite marriage woes of Gazzara and Bisset.
Finally, we see almost nothing of the Battle of Inchon or the subsequent campaign. The movie spends a lot of time on Ben Gazzara's team messing about to activate a lighthouse. When it comes time for the landing, however, we get only a few minutes of generic, TV movie-level war action before cutting to the reclaiming of Seoul. Is it too much to expect a big-budget epic about the Battle of Inchon to actually portray the Battle of Inchon?
THE OTHER NOMINEES:
1982 saw a range of genres represented at the Razzies. The other nominees for Worst Picture were: Annie, director John Huston's misfired musical based on the Broadway hit; Butterfly, an incest drama "introducing" Pia Zadora and showcasing just how far Orson Welles' star had fallen; Megaforce, one of the roughly 20,000 Star Wars knockoffs of the late '70s and early '80s; and The Pirate Movie, an ill-conceived attempt at melding of Gilbert & Sullivan and rock 'n' roll.
I'd rate Annie as quite a bit better than its reputation, and I have not seen the other nominees. I am particularly grateful that Butterly was not named Worst Picture, as that allows me to continue avoiding it.
While I doubt that Inchon - at least in its longer version - is any worse than Megaforce, I suspect the latter film is a lot more fun to watch. Inchon is mostly boring, which is the one sin I cannot forgive in movies and television. Frustrate me, anger me, repel me even... but don't bore me!
OVERALL:
Inchon is, I believe, the only Golden Raspberry winner that has never been released on home video. As bad as the film is, I still cannot understand why there hasn't been a "print-on-demand" or streaming release. Cinephiles would rent or buy out of morbid curiosity at the infamous flop, while at least a few casual viewers would unwittingly pick it up because of the cast.
That said, this is a genuinely bad movie. Name actors are badly miscast in key roles. The script focuses on trite melodrama while all but ignoring the genuinely gripping human stories that might have been told. Action scenes are poorly mounted. Finally, despite the big budget, it comes out looking like a television movie. A bad television movie.
Rating: Turkey.
Worst Picture: 1981 - Mommie Dearest
Worst Picture: 1983 - The Lonely Lady
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