Pretty good!

Rating: Null/10 (4 June 2001)

Although not as scrupulously researched as Richard Fleischer's 1970 TORA! TORA! TORA!, this highly energetic historical actioner boasts virtues which far outweigh its flaws. I found the love story a bit sappy, not up to the standard of Jim Cameron's affectatious TITANIC, and the battle sequences were overly loaded with quick cutting and actors screaming at each other. And drop-dead gorgeous nurses performing medical exams on military recruits? Please. Only in your dreams, pal. Military nurses had other things to do, like taking care of sick and wounded personnel in the hospitals. And why does no one smoke? Tobacco use was ubiquitous among men and women of all ages at the time.
The love story, in fact, seems to have come right out of William Wellman's 1927 WINGS, with Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers--two American flyers in WWI vying for the affections of Clara Bow. No spoiler intended, but PEARL HARBOR resolves the romantic triangle in a nearly identical fashion.
The good stuff, however, is simply transcendent. Some of the special effects are jaw-dropping beautiful. All 45 thousand tons of battleship USS ARIZONA seem to leap out of the water as she explodes from a Japanese bomb deep in the entrails of her ammunition magazine. Even better, and far sadder, is the slow, excrutiating death of battleship USS OKLAHOMA, as she gracefully, achingly capsizes. The water around OKLAHOMA is strewn with the bodies of dozens of drowned sailors just as the battleship's oversized holiday flag slowly unfurls just below the surface of the water. Navy welders work furiously to cut holes into the thick armor of the capsized battleship and rescue trapped crewmembers inside, only to speed the death of some by venting air out of flooding compartments. Welders manage to open holes just large enough so that drowning sailors can thrust their hands into the open for a few seconds, grasp welders' hands, and then succumb back into the flooded darkness.
The best, I thought, were the hospital sequences depicting military nurses who just simply wanted to run off in hysterics, but grimly took on the task of sorting out mounting casualties for treatment. The hospital scenes were so chaotic, and the resolution of the nurses and doctors so intense, they reminded me of the Omaha beach sequence of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

Well done, Michael Bay. I hope to see this one again.