"Pearl Harbor"
"Pearl Harbor." We have been hearing about this event film for over a year and finally, like a plague of locusts, it has descended on theaters everywhere. Director Michael Bay has parleyed his estimated $135 million budget into a 3-hour tome that, I have to say, I could have done without.
Don't get me wrong. I knew that the draw for "Pearl Harbor" would be the much-discussed special F/X and computer graphics used to depict the Japanese sneak attack on the slumbering battleship fleet of the US Navy stationed at the Pearl. I expected that Bay and "Braveheart" scripter Randall Wallace would shoot for an old-fashioned romantic yarn to wrap around the action that we're there to see. They do this but, unfortunately, the tale we get is bland and insipid, with little dimension given to the players in what amounts to a romantic triangle with a backdrop of war.
I'll get to the kick-ass F/X in a minute, but I really want to complain about the story and its inherent silliness. I knew things were going to be cliched and little more when, early in the film, fighter pilot Rafe McCaully (Ben Affleck) gives his beau, Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale), an origami bird to remember him by. My immediate thought was, "An origami bird? That's stupid!" It turned out to be the kick off gesture of the contrived yarn that is to come.
The huge cast is lost in the turmoil of the telling of the story as the setup is made for the pending attack while the individual stories of the stars unfold. Cocky Rafe, on the verge of love and war in the Pacific, takes an offer by the British to join the American Eagle squadron to do battle with the Nazis in Europe. He becomes missing-in-action and his best friend, Danny (Josh Hartnet), must break the bad news to Evelyn. Danny can't help being smitten with the beautiful Evelyn, but propriety and the memory of Rafe keeps him from acting hasty. As the months pass, the two can't help but fall in love. Then, Rafe miraculously appears on the scene and the triangular romantic angst surfaces. The lack of life given to the characters keeps this core story from ever getting off the ground.
If you are patient, though, and don't mind spending your movie-going dollars on the 35-minute long extravaganza of the attack on Pearl, you will have a visual treat, at least for a little while. From the moment that the Japanese lead pilot signals "tora, tora, tora," you are in for some of the most action packed, violent eye-candy we have seen since the opening of "Saving Private Ryan." As a matter of fact, there is more than passing borrowing from that Spielberg film, James Cameron's "Titanic," "From Here to Eternity" and a myriad of Hollywood war movies from the 40's and 50's. Too bad Bay garners the most mediocre of these contributing elements.
Historical accuracy has never been high on the list of things-to-do for Hollywood filmmakers and that tradition continues with "Pearl Harbor." History mavens will be, gleefully, all over this movie like ugly on an ape. Details like the paint jobs on the Japanese Zeroes, the types of ships anchored in the harbor, the kinds of uniforms and more will be scrutinized, closely. Erroneous details like the presence of Admiral Yamamoto aboard the attacking carriers or President Roosevelt rising out of his wheelchair unassisted will make some cringe. But, it's about what I expect from the man that brought us "Armageddon." Oh, yeah. I almost forgot that it's not just about the attack on Pearl. Once that is over, the makers tack on an extended sequence depicting Jimmy Doolittle's daring raid on Japan, a la Mervyn LeRoy's "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." With a few more bucks added to the budget, Bay could have added the Korean War, too.
Special F/X and a bunch of money do not make a good movie. There has to be a story, a believable one at least, to attach everything to and that does not happen here. "Pearl Harbor" bombs and I give it a C+.
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