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*1/2 of ****
Rated: PG-13
Length: 182 minutes, including 9 minutes of credits
Writer: Randall Wallace
Director: Michael Bay
Cast:
Ben Affleck: Rafe McCawley
Josh Hartnett: Danny Walker
Kate Beckinsale: Nurse Evelyn Johnson
Alec Baldwin: Jimmy Doolittle
Jon Voight: President Roosevelt
Mako: Admiral IsorokuYamamoto
Dan Aykroyd: Captain Thurman
Cuba Gooding Jr.: Doris 'Dorie' Miller
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Synopsis:
This is a fictional drama wrapped around events based off of events involved with the early American involvement of World War II. Two men who grew up together become military fighter pilots. in 1941, One of them falls in love with a nurse, joins the Eagle Squadron in England and is shot down. The other man and that nurse fall in love. The Japanese leaders plan an attack on a U.S. naval base to keep the U.S. from being able to wage war in the Pacific. The U.S. leadership tries to figure out exactly what the Japanese are doing. The man shot down in Europe shows up at Oahu where his friend and the nurse are stationed. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and all other military installations on the island. Low and behold, these two men also fly in the Doolittle Raid. A few things happen, and this movie finally ends.
Review:
The romance was better and more believable in A Knight's Tale, or nearly any other movie for that matter. The initial development was so weak that I had to keep from laughing at the director's desperate attempt to compensate with the conspicuously forced romantic score. The development of the second romance was better, but still sub par. The two friends (Affleck & Hartnett) were good with each other, but most of the supporting characters did seem to be there just for support. Jerry Bruckheimer did a better job with Titanic for both the romance, and the faithful reproduction of events. In Pearl Harbor, it may be understandable that liberties would have to be taken to place these two men at various historical events, but things went way overboard. If you were expecting an invasion at any time with limited defenses, would you put your fighter pilots out in the harbor working on ships! :rolleyes The unimaginable horror of the victims not lucky enough to die on the day of the attack would have been better depicted by giving the audience the perspective of the Shore Patrol guards who went half mad listening to two weeks, weeks, of desperate and weakening tapping by the sailors hopelessly trapped in the wrecked ships. The sound quality was excellent, but the cinematography was inconsistent. The scenes with real backgrounds were overly washed out while the scenes with CGI backgrounds were too crisp. Some of the color filter choices seemed a bit extreme. The surreal blurring was effective at emoting the extreme stress in the aftermath.
Alec Baldwin does a solid job as Doolittle, and he puts some respectability into the movie. Jon Voight is the other strong actor saving this movie as the passionate President Roosevelt. Mako was not up to his usual abilities with his portrayal of Admiral Yamamoto. Dan Aykroyd was good as the cryptanalyst, but he had limited dialog, and several audience members just laughed at first sight of him.
The special effects are much of what saves this movie from being a bomb. The more than half hour long raid on Oahu is busy and intense. There are errors in the effects, especially with inertia, but with as much as is involved, expecting perfection would be silly. Especially with the rest of the movie being so poorly written. The cliched lines and formulaic attempts to yank at the heartstrings are so laughable that people were giggling. The whole movie is an example of why Hollywood shouldn't substitute quality with quantity and hype, and yet there will probably be profits enough to make another iteration of the disaster focused formula. This is emotionally charged for sure, but if it were well done, it could have been much better.
Pearl Harbor will probably break the $100 million mark that it is aiming for on this long opening weekend, but that will be because of massive advertising, anticipation, and the very large numbers of screens that it is being shown on.
Note:
For a better perspective on the early war for the U.S. in the Pacific, see Tora! Tora! Tora!, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, & Midway (1976) in that order. The first and third could almost be called documentaries, and the drama in all three is much better.