A great two hour movie...

Rating: 4/10 (25 May 2001)

Unfortunately, they threw in that extra hour.
This film had 3 one hour sub-films, two of which were excellent.
The first hour is a *decent* (albeit slightly cliché) love story about a girl and her soldier... and well, just see it.
The second hour is a historical action film so gripping it put a pit in my stomach. Pearl Harbor strikes a closer to home to me than D-day, and the Pearl Harbor battle made me feel much the same way the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan did, with about a tenth of the gore.
The third hour is a complete waste of time. The filmmakers could have left this film as a gripping experience if they had ended it when the ambush on Pearl Harbor ended. There was enough "promise" at the end of the scene that it could have ended without being a complete tragedy, but they had to go on and fill a third hour with complete crap.
Alec Baldwin is miserable as a commanding officer. The part written for him is worse. There is so much game-day coach-motivating-a-team soapboxing done by his character that I wish they had found some way to hit him with a torpedo or put him in ammo storage on the Arizona about an hour before.
The worst part about the last hour is that it comes off as almost farcical and completely takes the teeth out of the first two hours. In the theater I was in, couples were holding hands for the first hour, everyone was dead silent and white-knucked for the second hour, but by the time the third hour was over, they were laughing at the 'heroic' speeches and checking their watches.
The first two hours: 8.5, All three together, 4.
My advice: Go see the film. Leave as soon as Alec Baldwin reenters the plot. You do that, you won't be sorry. If you stay you might be.