Details

Release year: 1968

Storyline

During World War II, an American pilot and a marooned Japanese navy captain are deserted on a small uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean. There, they must cease their hostility and cooperate if they want to survive, but will they?

Top credits

Directors

John Boorman

Writers

Cast

Lee Marvin — American Pilot
Toshirô Mifune — Captain Tsuruhiko Kuroda

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Did you know

• Both Lee Marvin and Toshirô Mifune actually served in the Pacific during World War II, of course on opposing sides. Marvin was a US Marine. He was wounded during the war and received the Purple Heart during the Battle of Saipan in 1944. Mifune served in the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service.

• After the producers changed the original ending without consulting him, director Sir John Boorman vowed to always retain creative control of his projects from then on.

• The studio and the producer didn't like the original filmed ending, so they used a scene of an explosion from the Peter Sellers film The Party (1968) instead. The original filmed ending, supposedly suggested by Lee Marvin himself, in which the two main characters, still arguing, simply go their separate ways, is available on the DVD. However, there is a never filmed third ending that was the original ending in the script, but the crew didn't like it and the director decided to scrap it. In this ending, a couple of Japanese soldiers eventually arrive on the island and arrest Marvin. Mifune opposes them, but to no avail. When he later finds Marvin's decapitated body, he loses it and attacks the two Japanese soldiers who killed him and decapitates them both.