Plot
Two young men are recruited into the Japanese air force just before outbreak of WW2 by the testpilot of Japans new super fighter - the Zero. The movie is told in reverse from the point of one of the young men who dossn't qualify for the pilot traning and instead joins the ground crew. It chronicles the entire history of the famous fighter from the first prototype test flights all through the war.
Isoroku Yamamoto (山本 五十六, Yamamoto Isoroku?, 24 April 1884 – 18 April 1943) was a Japanese Naval Marshal General and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and a student at Harvard University (1919–1921).
Yamamoto held several important posts in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and undertook many of its changes and reorganizations, especially its development of naval aviation. He was the commander-in-chief during the decisive early years of the Pacific War and so was responsible for major battles such as Pearl Harbor and Midway. He died during an inspection tour of forward positions in the Solomon Islands when his aircraft (a Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bomber) was shot down during an ambush by American P-38 Lightning fighter planes. His death was a major blow to Japanese military morale during World War II.
Yamamoto was born as Isoroku Takano (高野 五十六, Takano Isoroku?) in Nagaoka, Niigata. His father was Takano Sadayoshi (高野 貞吉, Takano Sadayoshi?), an intermediate samurai of the Nagaoka Domain. "Isoroku" is an old Japanese term meaning "56"; the name referred to his father's age at Isoroku's birth.
Iain Banks (born on 16 February 1954 in Dunfermline, Fife) is a Scottish writer. He writes mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks, and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies. In 2008, The Times named Banks in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was a professional ice skater. Banks studied English, philosophy, and psychology at the University of Stirling.
After attending the University of Stirling, Banks moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.
Banks met his future wife Annie in London, before the 1984 release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1992. It was announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. Annie died in 2009, two months after their divorce had become final. Banks currently lives in North Queensferry, a village on the north side of the Firth of Forth, with the published author and founder of the Dead by Dawn film festival Adèle Hartley. The two have been together since 2006.
Heidi Noelle Lenhart (born August 22, 1973) is an American actress, best known for her role as Jenny Garrison in the American TV series California Dreams and Jenny Caldwell in the Au Pair films.
Lenhart is the daughter of writer and ex-Playboy model Cheryl Saban and Ray Lenhart, a long-time California disc jockey. She is stepdaughter of Haim Saban of Saban Entertainment and she has an older sister named Tiffany Lenhart; as such she is sometimes credited as Heidi Saban.
She was married to Robin Dunne (April 2002 - ?) (divorced).