ATTACK FORCE Z
August 2009 marked the release of Quentin Tarantino’s recent movie “The Inglorious Basterds” (pardon my language). This is a movie that makes use of Nazi-occupied Europe during World War Two as a backdrop. Well before its release, the movie drew fire and controversy. Aside from examining this movie, I will also examine certain other war movies and the actual war itself. I will try to compare the aforementioned to the movie itself.
We looked at Quentin Tarantino’s recent movie The Inglorious Basterds and the 1978 war movie from which it was supposedly inspired from. In the past, there had been several war movies, both fiction and non-fiction, depicting a handful of Allied soldiers conducting clandestine operations deep inside enemy territory. Unlike that Tarantino movie, these operatives did not kill the enemy by caving in their heads with a baseball bat or taking scalps.
We focused on clandestine operations against the Germans. Now we will focus on the operations against the Japanese. This is where the movie Attack Force Z comes in. The movie was loosely inspired by the actual exploits of an elite Australian commando force. Its humble beginnings take place during the dark days of World War Two.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese unleashed their own version of Blitzkrieg on South-East Asia. Both the British/Australian and American forces had suffered heavy losses and defeats. The Australians quietly worked to rebuild their armed forces. In an effort to hamper Japan’s drive to invade Australia, a commando force was formed and was designated as Z Special Unit. Their mission was to commit sabotage and ambush Japanese forces, as well as conduct intelligence gathering. The most unusual approach to infiltrating enemy waters near enemy-held islands is by way of kayaking. Because their missions require stealth and silence, most of their weapons, particularly submachine guns, are fitted with fixed silencers/sound suppressors. This is their way of killing in silence and without giving away their presence.
Although most of the volunteers were Australian, Z Special Unit also had other nationals within their ranks including British and Dutch. Probably the most notable was a failed operation, in which 13 commandos were killed and the surviving captured members were executed in Singapore by beheading. This was the basis for a movie, which alas has eluded me.
Still, the exploits of Z Special Unit was the basis for the 1982 fictional war movie Attack Force Z. The movie was about a commando team infiltrating in Japanese occupied territory (the movie was actually filmed on location in Taiwan). Their mission was to find the survivors of a downed American aircraft and get them out of the island. Unfortunately, the mission experienced its first setback, when one of their members was seriously wounded in a firefight. Because there was no way to get the wounded member out of the island safely and no way he could evade probable capture, they had to kill him. This was clearly disliked but necessary. The remainder of the team carried out the mission as best as possible. Despite their efforts, the people they were supposed to extract were killed and only one team member survived after fighting off many Japanese soldiers.
The movie had the distinction of starring Mel Gibson, Sam Neill, and John Phillip Law. Both Mel Gibson and Sam Neill were starting out in the movies and did not become international stars until the mid-80s. John Phillip Law played the role of the Dutch team member. The idea behind the movie is to show a covert team trying to secure their objective and to avoid firefights if possible. The movie also highlighted the fact that a mission did not always have to be successful -a common cliché among some war movies.
