I was half listening to Jonathon Ross on Film 2001 last night and he absolutly TRASHED this film as a pathetic, long-winded story and an insult to the "Brave men and women who died at Pearl Harbour"
Ben Affleck was ineffectual, Kate Beckinsale was weak and only Josh Hartnett showed any of the star qualities that a film like this needed.
His words remember. Have to say, that with reviews like this, and other similarily bad ones, I'm not planning on seeing this film before a video release...
I just went to see it today and have to say that it's the worse film i've seen in a long time.
It felt like it was shot with a hand held camera, the extreme close ups were nauseating, and the acting was melodramatic. But some of the action scenes are pretty good, but not worth the cinema ticket.
Final verdict 4.6/10
[ June 04, 2001: Message edited by: Zed ]
I take it that Darth Gehenna and JediOasis are both americans.
The movie was pro american and showed them as more competent than they actually were, and the British as some weak oppostion.
They were also showed the Japanese as cold hearted in their attacks and the Americans as extremly emotional.
So any american would enjoy the movie.
Actually the filmakers made it out so the Japaneese wouldn't look bad, especially after all the bad press The Patriot got for making the British look bad. But the fact remains, Japan did ask for peace and still sneak attacked us. As far as showing Americans to be more competent, well Pearl Harbor is a true story. Those things really happened. Japan attacked us without warning, yet we still damanaged and destroyed several of their planes.
I'll just jump in as a historian here...
Well, it was a sneak attack to be sure, but both sides were guilty of deception during the whooe diplomatric process before hand.
And the US would have had to have been TOTALLY incompetent not to have destroyed some planes; even the best planned sneak attack takes casaulties. It was a heavy defeat for the US, but so what? They more or less defeated the Japanese subsequently with great ease; after Bataan the humilatiaions were all Japanese.
That said, you will have a hard time convincing me that the Americans were that much in the dark about Pearl Harbour; Bletchley Park warned them ages before hand that an attack was coming.
What do you mean that they portrayed the British as weak opposition, Zed? I haven't seen the film, but I doubt they have much time for Brit-knocking. But don't forget that Pearl Harbour was greeted with considerable relief by the Brits (and especially Churchill) because we NEEDED the US at that point if we were going to have any chance of landing in Europe. So if they portray us as needing them, they are not wrong.
More worrying, of course, is that the UK lost more people than died at Pearl Harbour in single nights during the Blitz, which lasted several years, yet no-one has made a modern day film about THAT.
[ June 05, 2001: Message edited by: Ushgarak ]
Originally posted by Zed:
<STRONG>So any american would enjoy the movie.</STRONG>
That's not true, most of America dislikes the film actually. It took quite a drop this weekend, from 70 million for the first weekend to 30 million for the second. Just because I'm American doesn't mean I'm automatically going to love it. I in fact thought for the longest time that the government knew of the bombing before-hand and let it happen, but I obviously didn't have all the facts.
The US navy sunk a jap sub just before the attack started, The captain on the US boat sent in warnings but they took way too long of a time to send it back and forth. Saw this on discovery channel last night.
I look forward to thre movie looks like a lot of cool effects, then again I`m weak for war movies and often dissapointed when I watch them. Saving privat Ryan was very good though, the big red line sucked
For once the movie critics were right. The battle scenes were okay and watchable. The remaining two hours, the much-heralded love story, were trash. As a woman, I'm all for love stories, but this one lacked chemistry, passion, intensity and just plain 'ole romance. Good actors should be able to overcome bad scripts.