LORELEI - The witch of the Pacific Ocean

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romanD
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Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2004 4:18 am

LORELEI - The witch of the Pacific Ocean

#1 Post by romanD »

Just got from Japan the japanese movie LORELEI... it's a submarine thriller set in WWII and the first of a "kind-of-trilogy" based on some books by a japanese author. The second of these 3 movies is AEGIS, which you might have heard of as Trevor Jones composed the score for that one (available at Intrada).
Anyway... Lorelei tells the fictional story of a submarine crew which get a german submarine from their allies to fight the Americans, which has a (supernatural) secret.
What at first sounds a bit distateful (to see the Japanese as the heroes of this story) becomes quickly a story about a conspiracy, because after the two atomic bombs have fallen, there are certain soldiers who don't want the Japanese Kingdom to surrender, but rather see it go down in Ashes. So the Americans send a third Atomic bomb on its way to destroy Tokyo.
So it's up to the Lorelei to stop the bomb from getting delivered and destroy the conspiracy.

Of course this movie delivers the usually stuff you expect from a submarine thriller: submarine chases, self sacrifices, the captain who has to send a soldier to his certain death to rescue others etc... but still I thought this movie had a nice twist with the supernatural angle (the Lorelei is a famous myth in Germany about a Siren who lured ships into its watery grave) and also actually a good message about War and didn't display the Americans as the Enemy and the Japanese as the heroes. Of course it doesn't really say who was right or wrong in that war, but it brings home the general message that any war is wrong.

The action is quite impressive, though you can't compare the FX to a Hollywood blockbuster, still I found them ambitious and at least very dynamic.
What particularly raises the movie above many others like this is the rousing music score by Nakoi Sato. A really very impressive big orchestral score with choir delivers especially on the emotional level. Of course it sounds like what you would expect for a submarine movie and is very heroic, but still it has a very nice touch of sadness to it and rousing action (just think of John Williams meets Hans Zimmer). I bought the CD right along with the DVD and it is spinning in my player for days now.

There are a couple japanese composers who compose very old-school like. Joe Hisaishi is the first coming to mind, but Masamichi Amano (Battle Royale) is on the same level. I will keep an eye on Sato, this is one of the best scores I heard this year.

Check it out! You can get it from amazon.jp and if you look for LORELEI soundtrack you can find a site with cue excerpts.

Highly recommended, both the 2-DVD set and the CD...

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