The Korean War wasn't unlike World War I's Western front, in that there was a brief burst of action before everyone settled into trench warfare, and the front lines effectively stopped moving. In a nutshell, North Korean troops drove the South Koreans back before a U.S.-led coalition invaded Inchon and drove them back (before being driven back again by Chinese troops). Those landings were a shoo-in for a film depiction.
Unfortunately, 1981's "Inchon" was the best Hollywood could do to immortalize them. Directed by Terence Young and starring Laurence Olivier as General Douglas MacArthur, the movie looks like an overbudget made-for-TV B-movie. Olivier himself holds his own, but he's surrounded by supporting characters who are granted no depth whatsoever and given only the cheesiest lines to deliver. That's at least better than the zero lines afforded to the Communists, who are a faceless horde. Every scene feels like a riff on a shamefully simple formula: Here's a building or a bridge. Here's a big explosion that took it out. Throw in some screaming extras and do it a handful of times, and you've got yourself "Inchon."
A few more interesting facts: The movie cost $46,000,000 to make and lost almost all of it, becoming one of the biggest box office disasters in history. The script was written by Robin Moore, who wrote the novel "The Green Berets," which was turned into, wouldn't you know it, another one of the worst war films ever made. Small world, isn't it?
