Such a frustrating disappointment

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The movie is set in the waning days of World War II, Japanese cities are being devastated by firebombing, and Hiroshima has been Atom- bombed. The plot centers on an attempt to prevent further Atomic incineration of Japanese cities by using an advanced submarine to prevent the delivery of other bombs. The Japanese cast was very strong and as others have noted, the American characters which are often third-rate actors in Japanese movies, were at least OK. The submarine was supposedly a late donation from the Nazi's to Japan. In fact in the film, it is almost identical to the French Surcouf submarine, which defected to the allies after France fell to the Germans. The Sci-Fi element is a young girl with an almost telepathic ability to see underwater. (I really don't think this information will spoil anything, but some viewers may be excessively touchy on such details) Other plot twists I will leave unsaid. I was fascinated by the way the Japanese attitude to the war was presented. The link with the Nazi's was somewhat explored and there was much discussion of the faults of the elders of Japanese society for starting a war which caused such chaos to the country. Not to be too critical on this point, but the movie did seem to dwell solely on the harm which befell the Japanese people, with no acknowledgment of the harm the Japanese did to others by starting an aggressive war in the first place. The Japanese have been criticized on this issue in other contexts, notably by the Chinese. Not that this detracts from the movie, but is is something we Gaijin (foreigners) may note.Nevertheless there is a sensitivity shown in the telling of the story which is quite remarkable given the subject matter. I found the movie to have a literary and almost poetic feel compared to a comparable American film. I mean have you ever seen a discussion of Dostoyevsky in an American Movie? One understands the suffering of a people, few of whom had any say in starting the disastrous events of the war. The soldiers mostly just "followed orders". The civilians of the cities of Japan, ended up as the real victims.The subplot involving the Captain on shore who orders the submarine on its mission, is not so much hard to follow as to understand the motivation. Possibly it makes more sense to the Japanese audience, who would be familiar with the book on which this is based.The computer work was not up to western standards, but was serviceable. I was left wondering if anyone would be prepared to hire an American or New Zealand lab to redo this to a higher standard. To do so would make the movie a genuine epic.

I found out about this film when I stumbled across the trailer. It looked spectacular, and when I finally got to see it, found it was.(SPOILERS) The plot of this film changes a few things about the history of the Second World War. Just before the defeat of Germany they gave Japan a prototype submarine with an advanced underwater tracking system called Lorelei. The sub when used was known as "the witch" by the Americans because of the eerie singing that was heard after each attack. Just after the first atomic bomb is dropped on Japan the sub is put into the hands of a once renegade captain who refused to go along with the suicide missions that the country had begun to use. Desperate times called for desperate measures and he's pressed into service with a crew of so called misfits. Their job is to try and prevent a second bombing of Japan. Once out at sea it becomes clear that the Lorelei system is based on Nazi genetic experiments and has a human at its heart. Things become complicated when the second bomb is dropped on Japan and through a web of circumstances its believed a third one, aimed at Tokyo, maybe on the way. (END SPOILERS)This is a rousing submarine tale told from the Japanese point of view. I liked how its not about winning the war rather its about the nobility of surviving and working towards a future. The music is rousing and the action sequences are spectacular. This is a great film to just sit down and immerse yourself in.As much as I liked it, its not perfect. The problems come in two forms. First there is a heavy reliance on computer generated effects with many of the surface ship sequences, they look almost unfinished or like something from a computer game. If you accept them for what they are you're golden, if not you may end up driven up the wall. The second problem is that this film is very convoluted when it comes to the plot. This was based on a novel and I kept feeling like I was missing some of the characters back story. On screen it worked because they knew their background, but in the audience I felt like something was missing. The film also suffers because one of the plot points, concerning one of the characters motivations for setting the story in motion isn't spelled out clearly until its almost in retrospect. Since we're not sure of why this was done, we, or rather I, became confused with what some of the other characters were doing. Its not fatal, but it does lead to several minutes of confusion.I really like this movie a great deal. There is something wonderful about it that I can't put my finger on. I like that its trying to be a bit more than an action film, that it does have a point of view. I like that it draws you in, shakes up your expectations and makes you care about the characters. (and yea, you can sometimes predict whats going to happen, but so what? rarely can you guess everything, even if you get part of it right.)I heartily recommend it. If you can take it for what it is, namely a flawed alternate history with uneven visual effects you'll enjoy it. If given the chance give it a try. I don't think you'll hate it, even if you don't love it.8 out of 10 (purely out of frustration from the sense of missing something)

I found LORELEI entertaining with some great performances and production values (especially for a big budget feature, by Japanese standards), but felt the story was lacking in a number of ways.Shinji Higuchi (special effects director for GODZILLA-MOTHRA-KING GHIDORAH and Shusuke Kaneko's GAMERA series) shows great promise here to be an excellent director. His talent and originality really shines in this film, and it's obvious he has a big future ahead of him. I'll be looking forward to his adaptation of NIPPON CHINBOTSU (JAPAN SINKS) next year. Despite his background, Higuchi shows in LORELEI that he knows how to balance SFX with the drama.Koji Yakusho as Captain Shinichi was wonderful. I'm so used to seeing him play laid back, morose characters in things like Kiyoshi Kurosawa films, and I didn't think he could be as animated as he was in LORELEI. Tokusatsu fans will also appreciate a good performance from Jun Kunimura (Major Komuro in GODZILLA FINAL WARS) as Dr. Matoi Tokioka, and one of my favorites, Masato Ibu (the Old Controller in GFW) shows up as Admiral Narazaki. On the other hand, the "young leads", Yu Kashii as Paula and Satoshi Tsumabuki as Origasa left me rather cold. The western cast was one of the best I've ever seen in a Japanese film, delivering their lines and reaction shots on a much more convincing level than anything I've seen recently in Japanese SF/F film.Special effects heavily dominated the movie, and although great (unprecedented?) for a Japanese film, they still looked like special effects more often than not. I was surprised (and a little disappointed) how much of it seemed to be CG as opposed to miniatures work. Very few shots looked "real". There was an almost dreamy "unreal" nature to many of the shots that may have been intended. But I think Japanese SFX crews still have a long way to go with compositing. Having said that, water is said to be the most difficult thing to work with in CG, and they did an admirable job with exciting dramatic shots that supported the story rather than detract from it.As I mentioned, though, the story itself felt weak in spots. LORELEI was written by Harutoshi Fukui, based on his bestselling novel "Shuusen no Lorelei". Based on what I've read of the original storyline, there were many changes made in the transition from print to screen, and the film probably benefits as a result. The storyline is tighter and faster, and jumps right into the action.But there are, in my Western-informed opinion, some mixed messages here that are a little hard to swallow, much of it related to how the Japanese tend to address their own perceptions of Word War II. Fukui certainly makes his politics known in the story. This is not to say that the Americans or Allied POV is treated poorly in the story, not at all. I just felt that there was a somewhat skewed "Japan as victim" angle that perhaps requires a Japanese background in order to truly empathize. As a result, it makes it difficult to understand some of the character motivations and twists in the story.As far as the sci-fi element of the story (MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW), I was surprised by how little of it there was. The I-507 itself is a very advanced German-built sub that has a detachable minisub that is towed by cable. The minisub is operated by one crewman and occupied by Paula. Paula has been engineered by the Nazis to be a living sonar, and is delivered to the Japanese as a component of the "Lorelei System". She's wired and tubed up to the minisub, and the whole device basically provides the I-507 with a super-advanced 3D visualization system with a reach of 120 nautical miles. This makes the I-507 incredibly accurate, but the deadly side effects take their toll on Paula. It's an interesting concept, but it's really just a plot device, sort of "What if Japan had a modern day weapon in WW2?" In the end, it's only used to position against more "What ifs" such as "What if the US had a third atom bomb at the time?" and "What if there were Japanese who had a hidden agenda towards the end of the war?" Nevertheless, LORELEI is an exciting look at what can be done by modern Japanese filmmakers with a big budget, quality talent and time. It takes the best of big-budget American thrillers, and fuses it with a more thoughtful Japanese approach to human drama that is, more often than not, lacking in its western counterparts. It remains to be seen whether the politics of the film will prevent it from wider exposure to audiences in the U.S..

"Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean" could be said the first of the "trilogy" (though almost entirely made, distributed and directed by different entities, for a good reason, to "divide the pie") based on novels written by Harutoshi Fukui (born 1968), with the other two being "Sengoku jieitai 1549" and the upcoming "AEGIS". A German- made submarine equipped with a secret weapon is dispatched on a mission to prevent the third A-bombing of Japan, the target this time being Tokyo. The film has all the elements to make it a good submarine movie including special effects underwater sequences and a mutiny, so I won't go into that. What makes this film, and the Fukui trilogy, special is how it treats the motivations for fighting a war. Just a few years ago, "Hotaru" (2001, starred by Ken Takakura, who's starred in so many yakuza movies) treated "the same old stuff" about the tragedy of kamikaze pilots, for whom fighting and dying was "Imperial will" and no one doubted it, but in actuality, the real soldiers weren't sure if they were dying from their own will, or were just being forced to die. That is basically the theme that Japanese war movies have treated for the last 60 years. "Lorelei" makes a little departure from that tradition in a good way. But it also drags that tradition. A young crew (who is convinced that he is fighting for the Emperor) asks a young girl "What do you fight for?" and the girl answers "Because I can sing, if I survive". Or, the Captain, after communication with the command structure was broken, solicits for volunteers to go shoot down the B29 strategic bomber that is about to take off to A-bomb Tokyo. He does not force his men to follow him in this suicidal mission, nor does he fight for any Imperial will; he and those who volunteered wanted to protect Tokyo their beloved city and its people their friends. Sounds normal? But this motivation was quite ABNORMAL in the war times. Soldiers had no free will to fight. They believed, or were forced into believing that to fight and die was virtue and honor. Anyone who doubted it was treated as traitor. It was patriotism elevated to religion. For 60 years, countless Japanese TV dramas and movies have doubted this belief, but were not able to come up with any alternative motivation for fighting a war. "Lorelei"'s answer to this question is that one fights for what he/she believes in, no matter what it is. But, that's all that the film can say anything about this issue. So, "What do you fight for?" is not just a question that the young soldier asks. It has been a question that almost every Japanese has been asking since the end of WWII and not many have been able to come up with definitive answers. "Because I can sing, if I survive" could be one of the most definitive (and in my opinion, convincing) answers that anyone's ever been able to produce. See the array of the Japanese ground force weaponry in "Sengoku jieitai 1549" and naval and air weaponry in the upcoming "AEGIS". Then think about the situation that not too many soldiers who will be using those weapons will have any definitive idea as to what they will be using them for. I guess I'm being sarcastic. But this is the situation that has resulted from the defeat in WWII and the "peace Constitution" nonsense. Find parallels in (German) "Das Boot" (1981), but note the fundamental differences. Also defeated in WWII, THEY knew what they were fighting for. So, statements like "ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country" will fall on dead ears in Japan. People here aren't sure if their country is doing anything for them other than ripping off taxes, and have no idea what they can do for their country; or rather, doing anything "for the country" had been and is still considered a taboo (considered "ultranationalism"). This point is clearly made in "Lorelei", and if you missed this point, you've missed the whole point. To compensate for this boring "comment", if you like anime, especially "Space Pirate Captain Herlock", though I'm not sure how its Western version turned out, the Captain of this submarine is depicted in his image ("Fight only for what you believe in"). Koji Yakusho who plays that role even looks like Herlock with his black coat and cap. The secret weapon "Lorelei" is also more animetic than scientific. There are also unrealistic, animetic scenes in which the sub shoots U.S. destroyers' screw shafts with non-detonating torpedoes. Or, can a sub shoot down a flying B29 with its cannon? These are all unrealistic, but seen as anime, they are "fantastic" if you know what I mean. But of course, this mixing of anime elements could be the film's shortcoming, especially if you've never seen an anime. If you are tired of watching Japanese war movies that only depict the aforementioned "tragedy", you will be relieved to see this movie. It looks so NORMAL, after 60 years of self-repentance for allegedly starting the Pacific War under "brainwashed" mentality. (7/01/'05)