I began this movie with having no info about the real history behind it, only knowing that it is based on true events and I hoped to learn something new by watching Only The Brave. Well, it didn't really work. The movie is confusing. Pretty much in the beginning we see Jimmie, the main protagonist of the film, sitting in the dark and stare into nothingness. His wife desperately tries to reach him, but he doesn't respond. Then the movie takes us on a journey through his mind, so it seems. Back to the battlefield and and the soldiers he fought with. Constant flashbacks follow, showing their lives at home with wives, girlfrinds, kids, etc. and at some point you just begin to question, why are we seeing the flashbacks of other characters when we are within the main characters mind? How can he see the private lives of his fellow companions? At some point you just ignore it and try to focus on other things, leaving logic aside. For a war film, there must be some intese moments, right? But nope, all we get to see is one side. The opposing German soldiers are nowhere to be seen and the characters which we got to know fire towards whatever. With no enemy in sight the battles seem unreal. And even if "our" characters got hit by a bullet you don't really care. None of these soldiers have anything interesting to tell and so the audience is forced to listen to generic dialogues about poker games, heritage mocking and what women they desire. On top one of the soldiers is so stupid, that the doc even has to explain the concept of a flesh wound to him. This movie tries to drown you in sadness and self pity, but nothing really touches you when seeing this. You only end up in feeling sorry for the time you invested by watching this boring thing.

Historians at the Army Center for Military History in Washington struggled for words to describe what happened. It was October 30, 1944. Members of the segregated Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, "cold, wet, weary and battle-scarred," rescued 211 Texas National Guardsmen who were surrounded by German forces in the foggy, wooded Vosges Mountains near Bruyeres, France. The First Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment had been cut off from food, ammunition, communications and hope for a week. The 442nd, comprised of Nisei (a person born in America of parents who emigrated from Japan) from Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States was ordered in when two other battalions of the 141st had been repelled repeatedly by the enemy. After three days of devastating battle, nearly half the Japanese-American troops were dead or wounded and the "Lost Battalion" was still trapped."Then, something happened in the 442nd," according to the military historians. "By ones and twos, almost spontaneously and without orders, the men got to their feet and, with a kind of universal anger, moved toward the enemy position. Bitter hand-to-hand combat ensued as the Americans fought from one fortified position to the next. Finally, the enemy broke in disorder." It is this story that is at the heart of "Only the Brave," Writer/Director Lane Nishikawa's very personal film of uncommon courage, misguided prejudice and family love now playing at the Hawaii International Film Festival. It is Nishikawa's final film in a trilogy ("Sound of a Voice," 2003; "Forgotten Valor," 2001) dealing with the experience of Japanese-Americans in the Second World War. The multi-talented auteur, who has performed in a number of films but is best known as a stage actor and director, had four uncles and other extended family members who served in the 442nd or the earlier 100th Infantry Battalion (formed as the Hawaiian Provisional Battalion).Instead of taking the wide-angle battle scene approach of a Wolfgang Peterson ("Troy"), Ridley Scott ("Kingdom of Heaven"), Oliver Stone ("Alexander') or even Steven Spielberg ("Saving Private Ryan"), Nishikawa has narrowed his focus to the points of view of his own small "band of brothers." Included in that number are Sergeant Jimmy Takata, played with grace and wisdom by the director, Glenn "Tak" Takase (Jason Scott Lee), Richard "Doc" Naganuma (Ken Narasaki), Steve "Zaki" Senzaki (Mark Dacascos), Yukio "Yuk" Nakajo (Yugi Okumoto) and Richard "Hilo" Imamura (Garett Sato). These are men who cannot see beyond their own 30mm eyes, the trees, darkness and fog that surround them, and the flares of machine guns and bursts of grenades that pound relentlessly. "Up close and personal" sounds a little trite, but that's what we get. Nishikawa shows us war just the way a soldier sees war.He also shows us, through flashbacks, the personal side of the war on the home front. "Doc" Naganuma's wife and baby awaiting his return in an internment camp where 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry (70,000 of whom were native-born United States citizens) sat out the war in conditions not much better than POWs. Mary Takata's (Tamlyn Tomita) struggle to reach her shell-shock husband after the peace. The mothers and fathers, wives and children whose one consolation was that their soldier-loved ones were among friends. (The dialogue is realistically grounded in the Pidgin English common to Hawaii-born people, and the banter between the soldiers sounds like something you would hear among a group of guys having a beer after work in a Wahiawa, Hawaii tavern.) The film is not without its flaws, some of them a function of the production's limited budget. It is in desperate need of a stronger score, powerfully executed with a more dynamic sound design. I saw a digital projection that needed sophisticated color correction; that can come when film prints are ultimately struck. I wish Nishikawa could re-shoot some of his early battle scenes. They are stiff and dated in their appearance as opposed to his footage later in the film when he had a stronger sense of self-confidence in getting the camera off its tripod and moving with it in a more documentary style. Watching your own dailies can be a major growing experience.But it is a powerful and sensitive piece of work that should be seen by far more than just the California school kids who use the director's earlier films as part of their history curriculum.Those of us who live in Hawaii understand the context of this film. Our neighbors include survivors of the 100th/442 RCB, their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. In Hawaii, where the war began for America, these men are revered. School kids can tell you of their exploits. Senator Daniel K. Inouye is recognized as much for his Congressional Medal of Honor as for his 46 years in the Congress. Sergeant Inouye was awarded the Bronze Star for his actions in the "Lost Battalion" campaign, lost ten pounds and gained a battlefield commission. Later, back in Italy, his heroism earned him one of 20 Medals of Honor conferred on 100/442 soldiers.There should be no more respected a group of senior citizens in America than the veterans of the "Purple Heart Battalion." In eight major campaigns, they were also awarded seven Presidential Unit Citations and 18,143 individual decorations (no, that is not a typographical error; 18,143 individual medals), including 52 Distinguished Service Crosses. In that number, of course, were 9,486 Purple Hearts, for that was the total of the injuries they suffered in combat.This is not the first film focused on the 100th/442 RCB. Van Johnson starred in 1951's "Go For Broke," a filmed titled after the motto of the battalion. In it he played Lt. Mike Grayson, who trained a Nisei platoon. The black and white film was heavily focused on Grayson, who loses his prejudices when he sees how the Japanese Americans fight in combat.

I was privileged to be able to see this movie @ a screening put on by the filmmaker @ The Majestic Theatre in Seattle Washington. This movie was very eye-opening for anyone that hasn't experienced or looked into the Japanese during the time they were put into internment camps.There are some great action scenes but also slow scenes... they all intermix and show the lives of the people fighting in an American War. I thought this movie was very moving and touching but very slow at some points where the point was made and needed to move on. The acting in this movie was great and at some points, I almost shed a tear because the movie was so touching. I would recommend this movie to anyone willing to learn about cultural differences between Americans and Japanese-Americans.

On December 7 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy raided Hawaii's Pearl Harbor and decimated the United States Navy's Pacific battleships.Two months later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, permitting the U.S. military to uproot thousands of West Coast Japanese and Japanese-Americans and ship them to inland interment camps.In February of 1943, the ban on Japanese in the military was lifted and the 100th Battalion 442nd Regimental Combat Team was formed. Containing Japanese-American volunteers from Hawaii and, remarkably, from out of the mainland interment camps, the 100th/442nd was sent to Europe."Only The Brave" is a fictionalized account of the 100th/442nd's most famous success: the October 1944 rescue of the "Lost Battalion", the all-white "Texas" 141st, trapped behind enemy lines deep within the Vosges Mountains of France.The movie opens during the battle for the town of Bruyeres, France. After a receiving a head wound, Sergeant Jimmy Takata (played by the film's writer and director, Lane Nishikawa) begins to "see" the memories of his dying troops. As they die, Takata also becomes a walking repository of their mementos: a signature pair of eyeglasses, a photograph of children, an engagement ring never given.Through the Bruyeres battle and the five bloody days of desperate fighting it takes to break through the German line and rescue the 141st, Nishikawa uses Sergeant Takata as a metaphor for the quiet and proud generation of Japanese-Americans who endured life in the relocation camps, who fought in battle and who kept up the home front, but who have mostly held onto their stories. Nishikawa's moral is an old one: the release of the past brings healing for the future, but it is especially poignant given that so few of that generation remain.Working with a limited budget and an abbreviated shooting schedule, Nishikawa wisely chose to "go small" with his shots. Each scene is personal to the viewer. Each battle is realistically chaotic without wide shots and multiple angles to give viewers their bearings. The result for the viewer is – as it is for the characters - an exhausted embrace of the story's pauses.Nishikawa also "goes small" with his characters. The memories that haunt Takata are often short, deeply personal gut punches. The realistic pidgin banter between the "local boy" Hawaiian Japanese and the exploration of the tensions between the Hawaiian Japanese and the mainland "kotonk" Japanese are products of character development and not just tossed in for "authenticity".Unlike many recent war films, there is little battle gore in "Only The Brave", making the infrequent bloody scenes that much more powerful.The cast, featuring Nishikawa, Jason Scott Lee, Yuji Okumoto and Tamlyn Tomita, turn in solid performances but Pat Morita's cameo was a little wonky for me."Only The Brave" will definitely be worth watching when it is finally released into theaters. I was lucky enough to attend a private screening in Seattle. I'd gladly wait in line again.