Pearl Harbor
Disney, 2001
Directed by Michael Bay

$

About thirty minutes into the new movie Pearl Harbor I realized that I'd been rolling my eyes so much that they actually started to hurt. But as time went on, the eye-rolling and the groaning gave way to laughter and smiles as I began to revel in sheer amazement that so many people could spend so much money to produce something so stupefyingly awful.

Make no mistake, Pearl Harbor is a bad movie. But at the same time, I would be hard pressed to discourage anyone from seeing it. To do so would deprive them of the rare opportunity to take in a spectacular calamity -- and I'm not talking about the Japanese sneak attack.

Film students would be wise to see the film so as to learn what not to do. The script is so wrought with cliches and bad dialogue, it stands as a lesson in how not to write a screenplay. Drama students should see the movie to learn how not to act on screen.

The one thing you won't learn much about, is World War II.

As it chronicles the months leading up to the infamous surprise bombing of the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, the movie is less concerned with Japanese troop movements and preparations than it is with a fictional love triangle between two best-buddy fighter pilots and the cute nurse they both love.

Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett play Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, respectively, two Tennessee farm boys-turned hot shot aces. Early scenes of the boys in training are highly reminiscent of another Jerry Bruckheimer-produced picture -- Top Gun (one of their fellow pilots is even named, Goose).

Affleck's performance is so hammy, observant Jews should avoid the theater. Putting on a silly Southern accent, Affleck's Rafe comes across as more of a caricature than a character. Hartnett, on the other hand, is so devoid of personality and charisma that his character barely registers at all. As the American nurse, Evelyn, British actress Kate Beckinsale looks gorgeous in the period costumes, and she's the only one of the three who doesn't embarrass herself.

At first, Rafe and Evelyn fall in love. But when Rafe volunteers to go fly fighter planes in Britain, the couple is separated. Evelyn and Danny are stationed together at Pearl Harbor when they get news that Rafe has been killed. Danny wastes little time making a move on his dead best friend's girl. But things get complicated when Rafe suddenly shows up in Hawaii, alive and well. The love story is so full of corn, I began to wonder if the filmmakers had to pay royalties to the Orville Redenbacher company. There's more corn here than in the state of Iowa.

Of course, the romance is only there to fill time until we get to the other main reason to see the picture -- the attack sequence, which is visually spectacular. Director Michael Bay once again shows his only real talent is knowing how to blow stuff up (there's a shot where the camera follows a bomb as it hurtles toward the deck of the USS Arizona; it's very cool).

But as great as the sequence looks, it lacks power. It's like watching a video game. Only extras and bit players bite the dust -- there's no emotional connection to the horror we're witnessing. There's also very little blood and carnage; the nameless, faceless sailors just disappear in balls of fire as the bombs hit their targets. When the film cuts to Evelyn at the base hospital, Bay intentionally makes the image blurry so we're spared very graphic shots of the wounded.

As good a showman as Bay is, he's also sloppy at times. Towards the end of the battle, he begins to follow the path of one particular torpedo -- but he loses track of it before the moment of impact; it's never clear what it hits. At a crucial moment later in the film, a shot of a plane crashing loses some of its effectiveness because Bay fails to give us an important cutaway to the inside of the cockpit right before the moment of impact. For sheer laziness, there's also a shot of a B-29 that's supposed to be flying, but from the angle of the aircraft, it's clear that the plane is merely sitting on a runway with its propellers spinning.

After the Pearl Harbor sequence, the movie attempts an appropriate third act resolution by tacking on the true-life story of Doolittle's Raiders, who made a daring bombing run over Tokyo that boosted American morale and provided a little revenge. Once again our fictional flyboys are conveniently placed in the middle of the action. But the movie takes a turn for the worse with Alec Baldwin's ludicrously over-the-top performance as Col. Doolittle, the leader of the raid. It's as if Baldwin thinks he's doing a Saturday Night Live sketch -- he's a parody of himself.

The other prominent historical figure on display is Franklin Roosevelt, played very nicely by Jon Voight. The make-up job, by effects wizard Stan Winston, is stunning. Voight is made to look so much like FDR, it's scary.

But what's really scary is the movie's dumbing down of American history. At one point, we get a look inside the cockpit of one of the Japanese fighter planes, and we see a photo of the battleship Arizona, placed there so the pilot can recognize his target. But beneath the photo, the ship's name is written out -- in English!. It's just one example of how little respect the movie has for its audience.

In hopes of making the film potentially profitable in Japan and Germany, the script bends over backward to paint the Japanese, and their motives for the attack, in a sympathetic light. The movie also purports that the Americans eventually prevailed over the Japanese through sheer spirit and determination. There's never any mention of a cowardly little device called the Atomic bomb.
(c) Copyright 2001