emsfoleyart-1 Review of In Harm's Way

In Harm's Way (2017)

Ok, but why kill everybody good, if it's not a true story?

[7/10 · 30 May 2019]

Believable war drama based on a fictional character in a real event, the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo at the start of WWII. Really liked the Chinese actors, Emil Hirsch seems mostly detached as per his usual. Nice love story develops, but the American makes it and the Chinese woman does not. Ultimately unsatisfying for that result, we experience little of the American's or the daughter's pain in the tragic loss. Metaphoric, I suppose, from the Chinese perspective, mirroring the actual sacrifice made by the Chinese in having given aid to the crash-landed American survivors in the Raid. They were brutally made to pay for assisting the downed Americans, by their Japanese occupiers. So, why not just cop-out, and let the Chinese mother survive? Or kill off the pilot, and see the mother's grief. Certainly didn't get enough remorse from the pilot. Oh he saved the daughter, "Hurray, for the USA" Again, Hirsch is way too detached for us to vicariously experience any real feelings of grief, so why put us through the exercise? "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" covered the same material with more pathos and tension, and didn't need the "love story" device. The book was even more effective, and didn't need to resort to cheap unfulfilling sentimentality to tell a compelling story.