The Highest Honour

The Highest Honour (1982)

The enemy gave them a choice: Live in disgrace. Die with honour.

After a highly successful raid on Singapore Harbour, soldiers of Z Special Unit lead a new expedition in Singapore, with disastrous results.

Date of release
1982-05-15
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (5)
Runtime
2h 23m
Genres
Drama, War
Director
Seiji Maruyama, Peter Maxwell

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Singapore

The Highest Honour is a 1982 Australian/Japanese co-production about Operation Jaywick and Operation Rimau by Z Special Unit during World War II.

Production

Producers John McCallum and Lee Robinson had previously made a film about Z Special Unit, Attack Force Z (1981). Robinson said he was approached to make the film by a member of the Australian embassy in Tokyo in 1980. He says the official asked him if he was interested in making a movie about Jaywick and Rimau with a Japanese company. Robinson says he spent a year researching the story in Japanese and Australian archives.

The film was originally shot under the title of Southern Cross. Production took place in 1982. It was financed by two dozen Australian businessmen and a Japanese production company, Shinihon Eija, who contributed $1.5 million in marketing and production costs.

There were two versions of the film – Australian and Japanese. Robinson later said the two versions were intrinsically the same but the emphasis in the Japanese film was more towards the Japanese actors and vice versa.

Robinson later said that "the film is a human story of how a friendship can develop among enemies and how human spirit rises above the atrocities of war. It is an anti-war film set in a period remembered for horrendous slayings of civilians."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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