Inchon

(S. Korea - US)

One Way. Director Terence Young; Producer Mitsuharu Ishii; Screenplay Robin Moore, Laird Koenig; Camera Bruce Surtees; Music Jerry Goldsmith

Laurence Olivier
Jacqueline Bisset
Ben Gazzara
Toshiro Mifune
Richard Roundtree

A major battle of the Korean war is given a decidedly religious viewpoint via Inchon, a $46 million pic from One Way Prods, an org affiliated with the Rev Sun Myung Moon (who gets screen credit as special advisor on Korean matters).

Laurence Olivier plays Gen Douglas MacArthur in this film that was four years in the making and bills 50,000 extras.

Plot involves the general's orchestration of the 1950 landing at the South Korean port of Inchon by United Nations forces, with heavy emphasis on divine guidance. Olivier is convincing in his role throughout most of the saga, the only member of the cast to achieve that status.

Screenplay [from a story by Robin Moore and Paul Savage] generally treats all others as one-dimensional buffoons, giving them lines that are unintentionally laughable. One reason is that all plot digressions are simply window dressing to the film's focus on the brutally invading North Koreans and the big-scale counterattack by the good guys. No speaking roles are given the Communists, for example.

(Color) Extract of a review from 1981. Running time: 140 MIN.

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