A very long war film without much going for it

Rating: 5/10 (2 November 2008)

For some reason, I was shown some of this highly criticised 2001 war and romance story in English class sometime during the second half of my high school years, which would have been several years after its release. I'm not exactly sure what I thought of it at the time, and had never heard of it before, so I had no clue what the general reception of it was. I would later find out that its general reception certainly wasn't very good, probably the worst I've ever seen for a war movie! For that reason, it didn't surprise me when I finally got around to watching the entire film and it failed to impress me for the most part.
Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker have been friends since childhood. By 1940, they are young men, and both join the Army Air Corps. Rafe meets a nurse named Evelyn Johnson and a romantic relationship between the two quickly begins. America has not yet entered World War II, but Rafe has volunteered to join the British in battle, so he soon finds himself far away from his new lover, and Danny and Evelyn are transferred to Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. Eventually, Rafe's plane crashes into the water, and he is presumed dead. Obviously upset about this, Danny and Evelyn begin to develop a relationship. However, it eventually turns out that Rafe is still alive, and Evelyn and Danny soon see him again! Unfortunately, Rafe soon learns about their relationship that started while he was gone, and as Japanese forces plan their surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, conflict between the two former friends begins!
"Pearl Harbour" is often criticised for a number of things, which unsurprisingly includes historical inaccuracy. Even though I'm no history buff, I'm convinced this film is very inaccurate (even that might be an understatement, I don't know) but I've learned to expect that from films based on historical events, even ones MUCH more popular than this one. However, this film is also criticised for having poor dialogue, and after seeing it myself, while I can't say I think the dialogue is consistently horrendous throughout, I can definitely understand the criticism! Another thing is the romantic scenes, which I'm also going to have to agree with, especially early in the film, before Rafe leaves, an example being Evelyn telling the other nurses how her relationship with Rafe began. Yes, a lot of the poor dialogue comes from the romantic aspect of the story early in the film, and it sometimes gets unintentionally funny, including some of the dialogue between Rafe and Evelyn, which made me laugh quite hard at least at one point! Also, after Rafe has gone, Evelyn writes a letter to him, telling him, "It's so strange to be half a world away from you," as if they knew each other for a long time before he left, which may have made me snicker or at least smile. For most of the film, the unintentional humour doesn't continue, but instead, we have some tedious action sequences, and a shallow story. There may be some mildly touching moments, but not usually, not enough to make up for a mostly dull approximate three hours the film goes on for.
I thought there was a good chance I would end up disliking this film more than I did. I could have ended up joining the many viewers who found it to be a well below average blockbuster. Now that I've seen the whole thing, I think it's basically average. It's a severely flawed, unsatisfying, and overlong romantic war film, but personally, I'm not exactly displeased with it enough to trash it as much as so many others have (I guess it could have been worse, and much more poorly received movies have been made). However, I still don't consider it a worthwhile effort, I'm definite on that one. Lots of highly acclaimed war movies have come from Hollywood over the decades, but "Pearl Harbour" is far from one of them, and there are obvious reasons for that. Even when an historical film is extremely inaccurate, it can still be extremely well written and scripted, which this film certainly isn't.