John Wayne headlines this tale of the USN Thunderfish as it takes on the Japanese Navy early in WW2. Admittedly, I thought the submarine's exploits were pretty much unbelievable until I read that many of them were based on actual incidents (not all involving the same submarine and crew of course). Despite that "Operation Pacific" is pretty weak. Much of the film was shot in studio and it shows, especially in the dockyard and underwater scenes. The best sequences (such as dive-bombing and torpedo runs at Leyte) are archival footage that are often not well matched to the newly filmed material. The 'on the beach' storyline is a tedious triangle between Wayne's character ('Lt Cmdr. Duke E. Gifford'), his ex-wife (a too young Patricia Neal) and "Lt. Bob Perry" the brother of Duke's buddy and "CO 'Pops' Perry" (played by Wayne perennial Ward Bond). Neither interesting nor believable, the love story requires lots of predictable coincidences in order to run its course and really slows the film down. The rest of the cast are OK, playing the stereotypical sailors found in these movies (the wiseacre, the loose cannon, etc) but their interactions with their commanding officers (including Wayne) never rang true to me. Some of the battle sequences are OK but the 'action footage', especially the obligatory depth-charging scenes, lacked the tension that makes for a really good submarine yarn (such as "Hell Below" or "Das Boot"). Good for die-hard fans of the Duke or the genre, otherwise, not a must-see.
Review of Operation Pacific
