Pearl Harbor Review
by "JONATHAN F RICHARDS" (MOVIECRITIC AT prodigy DOT net)June 1st, 2001
PEARL HARBOR
Directed by Michael Bay
With Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale
(Theaters) PG-13 183 min
Coming out of the new three-hour extravaganza about the bombing of Pearl Harbor I heard a teenage boy say "That's the best movie I ever saw!" But then again, back in the '70s I heard a teenage girl in a record store say to her friend "Did you know Paul McCartney was with another group before Wings?" The point is, teenage memories are short and context is limited.
Pearl Harbor is likely not the best movie you will ever see, but it is probably not the worst. For the palate refreshed by explosions there is plenty of nourishment here, though it's long in coming. For the eye delighted by Hawaiian sunsets and attractive young people there is much to feast on. For the mind that craves emotional subtlety, historical complexity, or depth of character, the menu is thin. For the ear that lives for true and credible dialogue, there are always earplugs (and these will be handy too for Hans Zimmer's bombastic score - how did they expect people to fight a war with all that music going on?)
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Michael Bay, and screenwriter Randall Wallace understood that three hours of bombing were too much even for an American audience, so they constructed their tale of the Japanese sneak attack on the American fleet around a love triangle. Cocky, square-jawed Rafe (Ben Affleck) and shy, square-jawed Danny (Josh Hartnett) are childhood pals from Tennessee whose love of flying lands them in the military flying planes first chance they get (Affleck, crowding 30, looks like he might have already logged about ten years in the service, but who's counting?) Rafe meets lovely nurse Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) while she's jabbing a needle into his bare fanny in the induction center, where she overlooks his inability to read an eye chart because he's obviously a born flyer even if he is illiterate (but not too illiterate to write and read eloquent love letters later on.)
Who wouldn't fall in love with a girl like that? Rafe does, but then he volunteers for a dangerous assignment to the Battle of Britain, and is shot down. After a suitable period of mourning Danny steps into the romantic picture, and the triangle is joined when something unexpected (to them, not to us) transpires.
Soon (some would say not soon enough) romance is overshadowed by infamy (or, as a tearful Evelyn puts it to Rafe, ".and then all this happened!") On come the Japanese, and the havoc wrought is truly spectacular. Some of it is viscerally stunning, some of it is emotionally devastating, and some of it looks like a video game.
Meanwhile, back in the White House, FDR (Jon Voight) is waging a heroic battle against his infirmity - not the polio that has crippled his legs, but the latex wattles that threaten to fall off his face whenever he waxes wroth. And in the Japanese fleet, Admiral Yamamoto (Mako) struggles with portentous doubts and dialogue ("Brilliant, Sir!" exclaims an aide, and he retorts "A brilliant man would find a way not to fight a war.") And nobody fights more hopeless odds than Alec Baldwin as the valiant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, who is saddled with some of the worst lines in the movie ("There's nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer,") but still manages some welcome swagger.
Bruckheimer & Co. don't want to leave us bummed out over the devastation of Pearl, so they've tacked on the bonus of Doolittle's daring retaliatory raid on Tokyo, and a romantic coda at the end which leaves us wondering how these sorely needed veterans got out of the service while, by the evidence of the age of the little boy, the war must still be raging.
Pearl Harbor is overwrought and underwritten, but for a generation to whom WWII is vague and ancient history, it serves to bring into focus a time when America lost its innocence and rose up to kick foreign butt.
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