#80 Inchon (Wes)

Inchon

Unlike WW1, WW2 and the Vietnam War, I know barely anything about the Korean War. All of my knowledge comes from the book, TV show and movie M*A*S*H*, so basically I know that there was a never ending poker game, and that surgeons tried to get sent home by wearing dresses. So I when I looked at what Inchon is about, I was happy to watch it with the hope that I may learn a little history at the very least.

Inchon is unsurprisingly a dramatised story about the Beginning of the Korean War and everything that led up to the Battle of Inchon. As the North Korean soldiers invade South Korea, the people who live there, including Barbara Hallsworth (Jacqueline Bisset), flee south towards Seoul. Along the way she picks up five children when they all narrowly escape death after the South Koreans blow up a bridge they’re crossing (to stop it being taken). Meanwhile her husband Major Frank Hallsworth (Ben Gazzara) and Sergeant August Henderson (Richard Roundtree), having heard about the invasion travel north to try to find her. After they’ve tracked her down, Hallsworth becomes an integral part of General Douglas MacArthur‘s (Laurence Olivier) plan for landing the US fleet in Inchon, by turning on a signalling light in a lighthouse. 

This movie was funded by Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, which is part of the reason why crowds stayed away (they were afraid that this movie was being used to recruit people to the faith – back in the 70s and 80s there was a lot of apprehension surrounding the faith, fuelled by rumours that they brainwashed their followers). The story of Inchon was Moon’s second choice though. At first he wanted to make a film about Jesus (who was to be played by Elvis Presley before he ). I’m sure that if that happened then we’d be watching that movie at some point in this list.

This is probably why this was the hardest film to track down to date and we ended up having to watch it on YouTube. It has never had a VHS or DVD release so whoever uploaded it took it from a VHS recording from the Good Life TV Network. I’m not surprised it’s never had a release, even without the funding controversy, it’s so boring that only the most fanatical collector of war movies would ever want to see it gracing their movie collection.

Somehow this film cost $46 million to make, and the end result just looks like a cheap TV movie. Having said that, there are some nice looking scenes in the film. The part where the South Koreans blow the bridge up is well shot, as is most of the outside cinematography. But it’s the internal shots that really let it down. Every set looks really cheap and unconvincing, and if it’s filmed inside you know you’re going to have to watch otherwise really talented actors perform as though they’re in the worst kind of melodrama.

It’s actually shocking how bad some of the acting is in this film. Laurence Olivier is the campest general that I’ve ever seen. He’s like a strange cross between Dr Smith from Lost in Space and Private Frazer Dad’s Army. He says his lines in the most ridiculous manner flailing his arms wildly, or using his pipe to punctuate every point as though he thought he was playing the lead role in Popeye: The Boardroom Years.

As for Bisset and Gazzara, they seem convinced that this really is just a made for TV movie and act accordingly, both putting in probably the worst performance I’ve seen either of them do. Roundtree, best known for his role as Shaft, has little other to do than drive people around in this movie, hardly a taxing role (more of a taxiing role…. I’ll get my coat).

Not that any of these actors could have done much with such a below par script. Unfortunately the bad writing doesn’t just involve the dialogue, but it means the plot is just awful too. The subplots are just the standard fodder that you get in any weekday afternoon true story movie. Lazily trying to tug on your heartstrings by showing orphans and couples torn apart by the war. A little more time spent on how this was affecting more of the Koreans whose homes had been invaded would have made a much more engaging story. Unfortunately their plight was largely overlooked (unless it was them being shot by the North Koreans – and this seems to be shown every few minutes for the first half of the movie).

Inchon has to be the second most long-winded, pointless war film I’ve ever seen (the worst has to be Pearl Harbour – which I was shocked not to see on this list. Of course I was pleased that I never have to sit through it again though). I’m just thankful that the three-hour Cannes version of this film seems to be lost, as I’m not sure I could have handled another forty minutes of this crap. There are rumours of a scene that was lost from that cut where Jesus appears in a cloud to tell a pilot to bomb some North Koreans. I’ll leave you to decide on whether that’s just plain awful, or potential comedy gold.

William T. Sherman apparently once said to some young cadets “You may think that war is all glory, but it is all hell, boys”. If I didn’t know better I would have sworn he said that after being forced to sit through a screening of Inchon. I think the only thing I learned about the Korean War watching this was that I need a copy of M*A*S*H* on DVD. Thankfully for you, this is one movie that is really easy to avoid.