Hollywood at it's worst

Rating: Null/10 (1 June 2001)

Holy cow! What a load of crap this movie was. Granted, the actual bombing of Pearl Harbor scene was well done (if you leave out the fact that the only two planes to make it in the air, of course, belong to our heroes). And while I liked the Cuba Gooding Jr. Character walk-through part it was obvious that the creators said...hmm, we need some authentic hero story from the raid to counter-balance the tripe we're trying to unload with the two main heroes. The best part of the scene was not the pyro-technics, nor the horror of the men as they died (both of which, I might add, were done infinitely better in Saving Private Ryan, a movie this one tried to compare itself with, yet without coming close to the true emotion and pain of it's predecessor), but the hospital scenes which showed the most true emotion and acting in the movie. Outside of this, the rest of the movie was a melodramatic, walk-through, cheesey-dialogued, self-important piece of Hollywood trite romance at it's worst. I have enjoyed Bay's films in the past because while they tend to have these paint-by-numbers romances in them, the films aren't overwhelmed by them. He has undertaken the task of putting Pearl Harbor back "on the map" of American History, only to drive it off a cliff 3 hours too late. There's too many good World War Two movies out there to have to watch this junk. Try "The Big Red One" or "Stalag 17" before spending hard earned money just so other atrocities like this one will be made in Hollywood.