Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean movie review

by Chris   ⋅   January 10, 2008   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

When I first picked up Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean I expected a standard, rather boring WWII submarine flick from the other side of the Pacific. Then I found out it was a WWII submarine flick with Koji Yakusho, which made it seem it might be a little less boring, but didn’t really move it up any higher in our priority queue. After a number of false starts we finally sat down to watch it on an airplane bound to San Francisco from Hawaii. The boring WWII flick with the awesome actor turned out to be a crazy historical sci-fi piece, a Twilight Zone/X-Files style WWII story featuring Nazi human experimentation, secret weapons, psychic powers, a cute girl, a super sub, and more classic submarine standoffs than you could shake a stick at. Let’s just say that this thing got real cool real quick. Who cares if the effects were a bit cheesy, and the narrative itself didn’t make a whole lot of sense? It was interesting.

The basic plot of Lorelei sees a peace loving general (Koji Yakusho) taking charge of a top secret submarine, The Lorelei, in order to stop the dropping of the second atomic bomb by the Americans. As history clearly shows, he does not succeed in this, but that doesn’t stop him from attempting to prevent the third. The third, you say? Why, yes! You know, the one the Americans were planning to drop on Tokyo so that the Japanese would give them their super-mega weapon, itself millions of times more powerful than the atomic bomb, thus establishing American mega-superiority and Japanese subjugation for years to come? Yah, that one! As I said, the story doesn’t exactly make a whole lot of sense, and a lot of plot developments surrounding this third-bomb issue struck me as downright illogical, but that didn’t stop the film from entertaining.

Helping Lorelei in no small part were performances by Yakusho (Doppelganger, Charisma), Satoshi Tsumabuki (Dororo, Tokyo Drift) and Yu Kashii (Death Note, Linda! Linda! Linda!). You know that you’re watching some quality acting when, despite completely ludicrous setups and a wonky narrative flow you still find yourself tearing up at the emotional parts. Seriously, these were good enough even to make me forgive the tacked-on Saving Private Ryan ending.

So, in closing, I quite liked Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific. It wasn’t great, nor was it particularly noteworthy, but it was entertaining and engaging for the two hours it lasted. Heck, it was far better than spending time with the in-flight movie, The Nanny Diaries.

About the Author

Chris Nelson has been a film fanatic since age six. A former film and English major, he is now a Software Engineer and contract Technical Writer living in the Silicon Valley.

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