Director Tim Burstall
Starring John Phillip Law, Mel Gibson, Sam Neill
Rated M
Score 3/6

A group of Australian commandos launch a secret mission against Japanese forces in World War II.

For those of you who might be interested the producers of Attack Force Z went on to make another movie about Z Special Unit The Highest Honour in 1983

I stumbled across this one while looking on iTunes. As I was about to watch for a moment I had this confused with Spyforce an Australian Television series that ran from 1971 until 1976 and Jack Thompson and Peter Sumner because during the credits I was expecting to hear the series’ title music which was a jazzed-up version of Waltzing Matilda. However, the opening credits in Attack Force Z had completely different music. The opening credits were also a little bit different from what you would usually expect from the opening credits of a movie. This is an interesting example of Mel Gibson’s early work and possibly one of the earliest movies starring Sam Neil that I have ever seen.

It seems that Attack Force Z did not age well judging by its digital transfer and some of the movie’s dialogue seemed to have been dubbed strangely, and there is a noticeable difference in how action sequences are shot. I also thought that it was an odd move by the filmmakers not use any subtitles for any of the Japanese or Chinese spoken throughout the movie.
This is a brutal yet melodramatic movie, this is not a bad movie and it should be noted that according to its prologue the movie is an honest and unflinching account of the type of operation carried out by Z Special Unit. I am not sure if I will be watching this again in a hurry, but this certainly isn’t a movie that I regret watching. Attack Force Z gives what you expect from the Hornblower or Richard Sharpe movies. I also liked the filmmakers point about the futility of war.