Inchon (1981)

Throughout the course of history, we have all been given abject lessons in the humility of a people during the most dire of times, how entire civilizations can be wiped from the earth in an instant of war and, perhaps most importantly, the horrific consequences when a religious sect tries to rewrite history.

I'm not talking about John Brown and the Abolitionists, or Jim Jones and that nasty business in Guyana in 1980, or even about Marshall Applewhite and his Heaven's Gate cultists. No, the topic this time out is an unassuming, cherubic-faced little cult leader named Sun Myung Moon.

You've heard of him, I'm sure: the members of his Unification Church, affectionately known as Moonies, had a profound effect on the world, its leaders and in airport terminals everywhere. Moon's philosophy is one of forgiving, loving and uniting (for everybody except homosexuals, Jews and Communists, apparently) and he has hundreds of thousands of blissful, smiling little Moonies handing out flowers and the Word of Moon all over the world.

To some degree it worked, what with the creation of Moon's young all-girl choral group known as "The Little Angels " who performed for such presidents as Truman and Eisenhower and for huger audiences all over the world, ownership of News World Communications (which publishes, among other things, The Washington Post) and annual donations from public and private sources which kept plenty of "happy green bills" in Sun Myung's happy hands. So there Moon was with loyal followers, lots of power and more money than you could shake a pamphlet at. What would the next move be for a man in this situation?

Well, if you're Moon, you'd want the best and most effective way to spread your word and your movement in the biggest and most crowd-reaching way possible. Let's face it: not everyone goes to the airport.

So in the early Eighties, Moon collaborated with longtime associate Mitsuhari Ishii on what to do with the situation and in a flash (of lightning from Heaven, one would guess), the answer came:

The Ten Commandments. The Greatest Story Ever Told. Ben Hur.

Those pesky Christians got word of their religion to the unwashed masses by use of motion pictures big and small (mostly big) and managed to convert hundreds to the way of The Lord almost daily by the works of Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea and Max Von Sydow being crucified. So now Moon and Ishii knew what they had to do to further their religious message....

Make a $40 million Korean War epic depicting an amphibious landing at the West Coast seaport city of Inchon by United States troops in order to relieve pressure on the Pusan Perimeter and to launch a United Nations offensive northward. All in the name of The Lord.

What is the sound of one facepalm by God? You just heard it.

How prophetic.

And now, like manna from Heaven, comes the plot: in the middle of the Korean War are Barbara Hallsworth (Jacqueline Bisset) and estranged husband and Army Major Frank Hallsworth (Ben Gazzara); she is looking after a handful of Korean children while he is hooked up with a young Korean lady (whose dad is played by no less than Toshiro Mifune) Separated by war, Major Hallsworth leads an undercover raid with Sgt. Henderson (Richard Roundtree), while Barbara tries to make it to safety with her young charges in a carload of adorability. Soon MacArthur (Sir Laurence Olivier!!) plans defense of the American way of life in Korea while The Hallsworths - Mr. and Mrs. - try to rekindle their passion while he leaves to head up a mission to make all safe and sound at our headlining site of battle. It all leads up to one of the most all-American, U.S. flag-waving, patriotic endings ever seen in a foreign-funded movie.

...well, of COURSE Laurence Olivier! If such names as Heston and Von Sydow could be synonymous with The Hand of God, then why not add to that list a man who was, for all intents and purposes, The Greatest Actor Of All Time? Who better to breathe life into a man who is still revered as a saint in The Philippines for his selfless war-lord efforts? General Douglas MacArthur has been portrayed in the past, sure, and by no less a roster of actors than Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Robert Vaughn, Charlton Heston and the ubiquitous James B. Sikking whom you'll remember from his outing in Outland a few reviews ago. All of these took turns as the sunglasses-wearing, corncob pipe-smoking military leader who masterminded many a military front, especially the same-titled one featured herein.

It would make sense, then, to have this man portrayed by the same award-=winning actor who has been Hamlet, King Lear, Richard III, Marcus Licinius Crassus, Henry V, Zeus - yeah, I like Clash Of The Titans (1981), problem? - earning due praise for his work, both big and small. Usually.

One should keep in mind, however, that by this time in his career, Olivier had fallen into the same trap that all once-great actors fell into - usually at their own behest. Anything for a buck, just pay me now is all I ask. And pay they did - who WOULDN'T want Olivier in their chintzy little flick, even if just for a few minutes? But a full-blown featuring role? YOWZA! He's picked up a paycheck in some less-than sterling work in The Boys from Brazil, Khartoum, The Betsy, The Jazz Singer, Wild Geese II...oh, the list stretches on so long and arduously....

Sir Larry, oh Sir Larry: watching you growl every line like a grumpy W.C. Fields, rolling your eyes with every serious platitude or prayer, wearing more makeup than RuPaul, standing a good foot and a half shorter than the real Big Mac, hiding your embarrassment underneath your Ray-Bans, every scene you appear in seeming more like a tour through DisneyLand's Audio-Animatronic Hall Of Generals Exhibit...and STILL you were the best thing in Inchon!

Gazzara looked bored to death and delivered every line with a monotone flatness, Bisset provided beauty and cleavage to her part - no acting necessary I guess, Roundtree was Shaft in Korea, Mifune didn't even do anything memorable as a not-so-magnificent non-samurai, even bit parts with a fey Rex Reed (is there a different kind of Rex Reed?) and the last movie role for the legendary David Janssen as a world-weary reporter who just happened to look like, talk like and dress like David Janssen (even with the dress shirt unbuttoned down to the third button) provided nothing for even schlock's sake.

You'd expect the director of such epic work as Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Thunderball, Wait Until Dark and The Valachi Papers to pump some action into the proceedings, but Terence Young only gives us static dialogue scenes, wide shots of overly-crowded action sequences, big invasion scenes where things would have gone far smoother if everybody involved spoke the same language (more on that later) and not one ounce of human involvement in even a close-up. Small wonder that Young's only two gigs after Inchon were The Jigsaw Man (again with Olivier!) and Run for Your Life. Heard of 'em? NO...really?

Writer Robin Moore wrote such books as The Green Berets, The French Connection and The Happy Hooker. What movies did he write? Hot Pants Holiday and this. A popular story went that he did all his writing while sitting in front of his typewriter...completely naked; he couldn't go out, he had nothing else to do but write. If only he could have found something more interesting to do with himself naked than write Inchon....

His co-writers fared little better: Laird Koenig is still best-remembered as the author of such films as The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (as well as the book it was based on) and a few episodes of "Flipper". And Paul Savage - well, TV Westerns and "The Dukes of Hazzard" wouldn't have been the same without him.

I can't really say too much about the flow of story, save for the fact that it's all as boring as all get-out. That's hard to say about a war movie: you get a lot of explosions, lots of battles, tanks driving about, soldiers running this way and that, civilians all ducking for cover, gunfire, bullets whizzing by, General MacArthur reciting The Lord's Prayer and a row of United Nations flags flying bravely against a black background at the end, but the biggest battle to be fought during Inchon will be between you and the sweet embrace of sleep. And sleep will have a strong hold all the way through.

One of the biggest problems with Inchon is there doesn't seem to be a lot of communication going on here. In fact, one scene had a fleet of battleships cruising in for a bruising, all of which were supposed to go one direction but, due to a Korean assistant misunderstanding what his Anglo director was telling him, signaled for the boats to go in the OPPOSITE direction! Good. Add to that the fact there was a lot of inclement weather, a lighthouse specially built at Inchon Harbor literally destroyed by a monsoon and hastily rebuilt, and so much grumbling and dissension behind the scenes with actors, crew and so forth, SOMEONE must not have wanted Moon to spread his gospel around. Should have sent down a few more lightning bolts, perhaps?

This movie isn't bad enough to be camp. This movie isn't bad enough to be "so-bad-it's-good". This movie isn't bad enough to be on a drive-in quadruple-bill. This movie doesn't deserve to be compared to the word "bad".

$46 million. This thing cost FORTY-SIX MILLION DOLLARS. American. Do you realize how many Police Academys and Assassination of Trotskys and Exorcist II: The Heretics we could have bought with that money - and STILL ended up with the same level of film-making regardless? But this is not just any regular $46 million, you see - this all came straight from the happy green bills of Big Daddy MoonBucks' coffers. This was his baby, his vision, his legacy to the world to show just how important it is to remember the Korean War so we can see God's plan for our lives in the heavily-rouged and lipsticked face of Laurence Olivier.

Lots of people saw right through this as a Moonie drive and apparently stayed far clear of any theater showing Inchon, if just to keep from being accosted from any flower-bearing, pamphlet-pushing Moon children. I doubt, though, there would be much trouble with that, seeing as how it's not like religious fervor spread as hard with this movie as it did with The Passion Of The Christ. Of course, that movie just deal with Jesus. Inchon was executive-produced by The Second Coming of Jesus. Surely people could see the reasoning in that, right?

If this was the tool Reverend Moon intended to use to bring more people to his light and benevolence, then I think he may want to rethink his great plan for mankind. Not only did this movie only earn back a tad over $5 million PERIOD, it has never been released on VHS, DVD, Laserdisc, BetaMax, 8-millimeter, flip-cards, GAF ViewMaster discs or any other format since then - and it doesn't look too good for it to even be projected on a hung-up bedsheet in a dirty backroom in Tijuana anytime soon, either.

You know what? I watched "M*A*S*H" for 10 years and got a pretty good idea what the Korean War was all about - I didn't need bloodless romance, short overly made-up generals and second-hand patriotism from a different country with a pseudo-religious connotation to tell me how important God was in my life. And this movie sure didn't tell me anything else, either. If Moon tried working in any kind of a subliminal message, it must have been: "don't watch this movie again, stupid".

And if that was the message Inchon wanted to convey - it worked.