During World War II, a Japanese soldier and an American pilot are stranded together on a pacific island. At first they try to kill each other, or at least I think they are trying to kill each other. They seem to yell and chase each other around a whole lot. At one point they capture and tie each other up to a post and they take turns forcing the other one to walk up and down the beach in some sort of Christ like "Stations of the Cross" thing (it's very symbolic). Eventually they decide to work together to build a raft and escape from the island, because it's all about that brotherhood thing and working together is good, fighting with each other is not good.
After lots of artistic raft floating on the Pacific Ocean camera shots, they reach yet another island where they find the remains of a military base and finally they get cleaned up (they were looking mighty stinky). They find some booze get drunk and start arguing, in the distance you can hear explosions. Suddenly the building blows up and that's the end of the movie. But wait...you can go to the alternate ending on the DVD to see Boorman's original ending which is...the two of them get mad at each other and just walk away.
What ever they learned about brotherhood has been erased by their return to civilization, it's all very sad, in this rather heavy handed ending.
Hell in the Pacific is a rather dreary disappointing film, Toshiro Mifune and Lee Marvin the stars of the film were WWII veterans, but they must have had more interesting stories to tell than this time waster of a film.
Written by Reuben Bercovitch, Alexander Jacobs and Eric Bercovici, the running time is 103 minutes.
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