The movie just does not nail the prison of war experience. Even though they had to keep in the guidelines of the PG-13, there are ways to do the barbaric treatment by the Japanese to bring home the reality.
There were problems with the movie that I know will be seen as knit-picky. I will spare my entire list.
The story of Louis Zamperini's road to the Olympics was done well and inspiring. Why he didn't do so well in his race was not told. It did not tell of Louis' weight gain on the voyage over to Germany. The food aboard the ship was too much for him to resist. I would have wanted that tidbit of information.
During the opening ceremony, Zamperini and a Japanese athlete were shown nodding at each other. The Japanese athlete was the prison camp tormentor, Mutsuhiro "The Bird" Watanabe! What? Later in the prison camp, out trots "The Bird" and nothing is made about the Olympics encounter.
The B-24 was laden with eight long range Browning M2 .50 caliber machine guns: one in the nose, one in the belly, two in a tail turret, two in a dorsal turret (just aft of the cockpit), and two in the waist. The movie showed incredible trouble by the machine gun operators in knocking out the Japanese Zeros. The M2 wasn't called "Ma Deuce" for nothing. The movie showed the crew's airplane shot up like Swiss cheese. Why such a poor shooting performance? Hello!
The prison camp was moved to a coal transportation hub in a Japanese bay somewhere. It showed the prisoners packing coal off the barge, up a high staircase and up a ramp to the train car. The packs, strapped to their shoulders, were bucket-shaped and seemed to carry a huge weight of coal. Prisoners worked from early morning to nightfall. I cannot imagine why the Japanese used this method for transferring coal from a barge to a railroad car. Certainly conveyor belts and bucket elevators would have done it more efficiently--or a better design of the transfer station. The Japanese weren't that stupid!
There are many other holes in this movie that makes it like the Swiss cheese of the B-24 Liberator we saw in the movie.
In the real story of Zamperini, he is saved by his Christian faith after the war. He was converted at the 1949 Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles. He threw away his cigarettes and booze and would go on to support Victory Boys camp, a place where young addicts received treatment. All was made about Zamperini's survival but nothing was made of his redemption. That is the huge hole that shoots down this movie for me.
[[Too much was devoted to the tedious time in the life boat after their B-24 crashes at sea (why was there no emergency radio provided?)]]
I don’t know, maybe for the same reason that decent, working engines weren’t provided? I’m thinking that WWII-era radios were large and clunky, and that equipping every liferaft with one might have been prohibitive with respect to cost and weight.
Anyway, here is the operator’s manual for a B24. I didn’t see anything about an emergency radio in it.
[[During the opening ceremony, Zamperini and a Japanese athlete were shown nodding at each other. The Japanese athlete was the prison camp tormentor, Mutsuhiro “The Bird” Watanabe! What? Later in the prison camp, out trots “The Bird” and nothing is made about the Olympics encounter.]]
Watanabe didn’t compete in the 1936 Olympics and the actor that played the Japanese athlete wasn’t the same actor that played Watanabe. Source: IMDB
Someone else will have to address your questions about the coal operation.
More about liferaft equipment (it WAS an interesting question).
“When Zamperini’s B-24 went down in the shark-infested Pacific Ocean, he and two crewmates (pilot Russell Allen “Phil” Phillips and Francis “Mac” McNamara) had to survive with only the supplies that had been stashed in the pockets of a pair of small life rafts. It wasn’t much. The military would soon add many more pieces of essential equipment to these emergency rafts — sun tarpaulin for shade, bailing bucket, mast and sail, sea anchor, sun ointment, first aid kit, puncture plugs, flashlight, fishing tackle, jackknife, scissors, whistle, compass, Gibson Girl radio transmitter, and even religious pamphlets for morale. But Louie, Mac, and Phil would not enjoy the benefits of these future additions. They had no knife, almost no food, and no navigation equipment whatsoever.”
Thanks for your comments. I did find the life raft sequence tedious and the POW experience was too low-key. Maybe someone else will do the story right and get to his life after war. However, this guy lived a life worthy of a mini-series. I did not know that Bird was the other Olympian. It’s a shame that so many significant details were not brought out in the movie.