"Hell in the Pacific" is a fairly early film in the career of  John Boorman, a sort of stealth director whose name rarely occurs to you  right away as one of the greats but who has done excellent work over many  decades.  "Deliverance" was four years off, "Excalibur"  and "Hope and Glory" further out, and the clean and sharp  "The General" a full three decades away.