Pearl Harbor Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)August 3rd, 2001
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The more I think about Pearl Harbor, the more it pisses me off. It seemed enjoyable enough while I was watching it, but afterwards, the flaws began to bubble up through the calculated, jingoistic schlock. It's a day later and I'm liking it even less. Oh, and just so you know, I'm talking about the film - not the actual events of December 7, 1941. A lot of you people out there are too dumb to tell the difference, which accounted for a number of messages condemning me to a painful death for not feeling enough sympathy for the men who lost their lives on the Andrea Gail. I didn't like The Perfect Storm, but a bad review of that film doesn't mean I'm glad the ship' s crew are fishing with Jesus now. Ditto for Harbor. What follows is a critique of the film - not history.
Plenty of films use music and imagery to coerce you into feeling emotions that you may not particularly want to feel, but Harbor takes the manipulation cake. On the surface, it appears to be a simple combination of action and romance, so, a la Titanic, there's something for John and for Mary. That's not so bad, but dig a bit deeper and you'll find Harbor to be a shameless, cunning monster that has carefully checked and double-checked every important demographic of every potential moviegoer. African-Americans like films? Let's add a completely meaningless subplot about a black Navy cook. Hillbillies spend money at the theatre nowadays? Let's give a Southern accent to both male leads.
That's not so bad either, and it's been done before, so it's easy to overlook. But when you consider the parallel between Harbor's revisionist history and the Japanese box office gross of Titanic, things become a little more sickening. James Cameron's film took in over $200 million in Japan, so Harbor's producers (Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer) had to carefully find a way to make the antagonist Japanese characters into a likeable bunch that had no choice but to wipe out most of the U.S. Navy. They practically made it seem like the bombing of Pearl Harbor was our fault, just to guarantee a decent take at the Japanese box office. Think that's bad? Variety has reported that Disney will send special cuts of the film to Germany and Japan with toned down references to "dirty Japs" and other defamatory slang (like nobody was hurling slurs like these in the '40s). Now that's artistic integrity!
On to the story now, and you don't really need a recap if you've seen Titanic (some scenes were even shot in the same giant water tank). Harbor takes about 90 minutes to set up the love triangle between nurse Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale, Brokedown Palace) and hayseed pilots Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck, Bounce) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett, Here on Earth). Then something tragic happens (iceberg/bombing) that is both a special effects extravaganza and approximately 40 minutes long. And then somebody dies.
Because Harbor is set during a pivotal moment in World War II, it will draw unfavorable comparisons to Saving Private Ryan, although its PG-13 rating doesn't allow the violence to become too gruesome (after all, scaring away the kids means less cash in the coffers, and this is definitely all about the money). Unlike the claustrophobic Ryan, which allowed the viewer to track a particular group of soldiers during the invasion of Normandy, Harbor 's scope is much grander. That's not to say it's bad (there's something about seeing American soldiers caught so off guard that they've got toothbrushes in their mouths as they watch the Japanese Zeroes spray everything with bombs and bullets), but it's definitely not as personal and, as a result, lacks the emotional oomph of even a typical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Is it impressive? You bet. Would I see it again? Only if I showed up 90 minutes late to miss the preamble, which made me feel like a POW.
While Harbor smacks of both Titanic and Ryan, it thankfully doesn't fall into the same set-in-modern-day-but-told-primarily-through-one-long-flashback trap that served as nothing but a distraction in those two films. That's about the only positive thing I can say about Randall Wallace's script, which is yet more evidence that his Braveheart must have been a total fluke. Hans Zimmer 's (Hannibal) score is cold and manipulative but does manage to drown out some of Wallace's cheesy dialogue. Director Michael Bay (Armageddon) relaxes his spastic style a bit and, with cinematographer John Schwartzman (The Rock), concocts some nice-looking scenes (although some, like the Hartnett/Beckinsale sexual romp through a hangar full of hanging parachutes, inspire only a gag reflex).
As far as the acting goes, there's only so much you can do with a bad script and a preponderance of scenes that were probably shot against a blue screen. Affleck, Hartnett and Beckinsale fail to connect with the audience in any manner whatsoever, and most of the supporting cast isn't around long enough to make a lasting impression. Aside from the stammering Ewen Bremner (Spud from Trainspotting), the rest of the flyboys (William Lee Scott, Michael Shannon, Matthew Davis) are all identical and as vanilla as their real-life names. The nursing crew is compromised of a gaggle of actresses best known for starring in films/shows with one-word titles (James King, Blow; Catherine Kellner, Shaft; Jennifer Garner, Felicity; Sara Rue, Popular).
As part of his ongoing effort to tackle every Navy cook role in Hollywood, Cuba Gooding Jr. (Men of Honor) plays Dorie Miller, one of Harbor's few characters based in reality, even though the film wouldn't have been a smidgen different with him. Dan Aykroyd, Alec Baldwin, William Fichtner, Tom Sizemore and Colm Feore all log in decent yet small turns, but the best performance belongs to Jon Voight, who, along with numerous facial prosthetics, plays Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
2:55 - PG-13 for sustained intense war sequences, images of wounded, brief sensuality and some language
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