For a 1968 Hollywood-bankrolled war movie, HELL IN THE PACIFIC was almost right up there with the best of "foreign" films of the Sixties. Featuring only two characters throughout---a Japanese officer and an American officer marooned together on a otherwise unpopulated Pacific island in 1944---the film puts us immediately into the difficulties facing the two men, who are enemies by their circumstances and literally cannot understand each other. The story of how they deal with their plight unfolds in ways that make perfect sense, and both Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune as the two exiles give performances that are both believable and affecting. In fact, the only thing that keeps this from being a five-star movie for me is the very end, which, as I suspected, was grafted on at the behest of the studio heads [cf, director John Boorman's autobiography, ADVENTURES OF A SUBURBAN BOY]. The original ending, included on this DVD release as a special feature, makes much more sense and would have been better. But up until then you're watching one of the best war movies ever made.