Reception
At the time of its initial movie release, Tora! Tora! Tora! was thought to be a box office flop in North America, although its domestic box office of $29,548,291 led to its being ranked the ninth highest-grossing film of 1970. It was a major hit in Japan and over the years, home media releases provided a larger overall profit.
Roger Ebert felt that Tora! Tora! Tora! was "one of the deadest, dullest blockbusters ever made" and suffered from not having "some characters to identify with." In addition, he criticized the film for poor acting and special effects in his 1970 review.Vincent Canby, reviewer for The New York Times, was similarly unimpressed, noting the film was "nothing less than a $25-million irrelevancy." Variety also found the film to be boring; however, the magazine praised the film's action sequences and production values. James Berardinelli, however, said it was "rare for a feature film to attain the trifecta of entertaining, informing, and educating."
Charles Champlin in his review for the Los Angeles Times on September 23, 1970, considered the movie's chief virtues as a "spectacular", and the careful recreation of a historical event. Despite the initial negative reviews, the film was critically acclaimed for its vivid action scenes, and found favor with aviation and history aficionados. However, even the team of Jack Hardwick and Ed Schnepf who have been involved in research on aviation films, had relegated Tora! Tora! Tora! to the "also-ran" status, due to its slow-moving plotline.The film holds a 65% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 17 critical reviews.
Several later films and TV series relating to World War II in the Pacific have used footage from Tora! Tora! Tora! due to the film's "almost perfect documentary accuracy." These productions include Midway (in the Tora! Tora! Tora! DVD commentary, Fleischer is angry that Universal used the footage), Pearl (TV mini-series 1978), From Here to Eternity (TV mini-series 1979), The Final Countdown, Magnum P. I. episode "Lest We Forget" aired February 12, 1981 and Australia.
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