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PEARL HARBOR Send This Review to a Friend
For a reported cost of $135 million you would think the filmmakers could at least have come up with a better plot than the cliché of two boyhood pals growing up to become fighter pilots in love with the same girl. I could have also told them how to save some of that $135 million. For one thing, they could have cut the thunderous music which rarely shuts up from beginning to end. When will Hollywood geniuses learn that the louder the music the less the realism? That's true whether in intimate romantic moments or in mass destruction of the kind unleashed at Pearl Harbor. They also could have shortened the attack sequence itself, so extended that the devastation grows numbing.
And didn't anybody realize how foolish a blip in Randall Wallace's screenplay would prove to be at a critical juncture? Kate Beckinsale as the gallant nurse Evelyn, in talking about her personal troubles, tops it off by referring to the disastrous results of the Japanese bombing "…and then all this." The link is an insensitive tip-off to what's wrong with this movie that is more blockhead than blockbuster. It is yet another war movie in which the war, no matter how extravagantly filmed, becomes background to a love story that isn't credible in the first place. Can you believe a situation in which a combat-bound airman, with the woman he loves practically giving him an engraved invitation to go all the way, refuses because he wants to have something to look forward to when he gets back?
There is still an important aspect that emerges from the Hollywood folly. One is reminded anew of the tremendous sacrifices that airmen, seamen, nurses and others made for our country. That recollection shines through the moviemaking nonsense because it is true. But here is a subject that cries out for astute political treatment and concentration on the reality of what happened. Instead we get a wrapping of the reality in an unconvincing romantic triangle that only diverts attention from the war itself. Curiously, this is a rah-rah film that could have been made in the midst of World War II, like the other movies meant to rally the home front. The filmmaking technology is greater now, but the reliance on cornball plots apparently hasn't changed. What is different is the commercial need to gloss over history in a way that doesn't offend the Japanese.
As for the make believe on screen, Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are appealing as the fly-boys, beautiful Kate Beckinsale acts well enough as the nurse who loses one lover, gains another--well, I don't want to give more of even this insipid plot away to those who haven't seen the film. Cuba Gooding, Jr. adds impact as African-American naval hero Doris "Dorie" Miller, Alec Baldwin has strong screen presence as Col. James H. Doolittle, who leads the famous bombing raid on Tokyo, and heavily made up Jon Voight is about as good as one can be playing President Franklin D. Roosevelt, given the real image of Roosevelt that is still before the country in newsreel clips.
The competent cast and all of the expertly and painstakingly re-created death and destruction that director Michael Bay, armed with stunt men, special effects from Industrial Light & Magic and a whopping budget, captures on screen can't wipe away the impression that 60 years after the event "Pearl Harbor" is no better than a shallow extravaganza. A Touchstone Pictures release.
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