Good summer flick

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2001)

I liked this film.
I also like reading about history. But I don't have to pay $8 to go to the local library and check out a book on Pearl Harbor and spend the next 2 weeks reading about it. It's for free. But it's also rather boring, too. Most historical books - hell, history itself - is boring.

So I go to see films and see fiction interwoven into the fabric of reality - which of course is what the 2001 "Pearl Harbor" is.
Hey, this movie is Hollywoodized - don't kid yourself. Facts about this raid are "dumbed" down for the overwight, hot-dog eating American audience. But who cares, right? If you want to read or see about what *really* happened in 1941, rent "Tora Tora Tora" in all of its bland, black-and-white boringness.
But if you want to go see a rip-roaring "fun" movie - leave behind your history book and just have fun. Let me repeat myself.
"Just. Have. Fun!"
There is a love story. Something about two guys chasing after the same woman. One of the men goes to Hawaii. The other to Britain to help our cousins stave off those dastardly Nazis. One of the two gets shot down, he's believe to be dead, yadda yadda yadda, something something, they do it in some hanging parachutes and then... the "real" reason we paid what we did to see this flick: the attack.
You know, you gotta tip your hat to the Japanese military when you realize the sheer scope of the attack (hundreds of planes - broken up between high-altitude bombers, fighters and torpedo planes) and the damage they wrought (2,000-plus dead and more than a dozen ships hit in less than 2 hours).
The entire attack - more than 30 minutes long but it seems like 10 minutes - is amazing. A few critics said the fx was worse than those seen on Titanic - I disagree. The aerial combat was breathtaking. The bombing and raking of Americans in the water was done extremely well. I found myself ducking from the bullets spat from the diving Zeros, much like I did during the opening of "Saving Private Ryan." And some of my favorite war footage didn't occur over the skies of Hawaii, but rather over Britain, when British and the American "Eagle Squadron" jumped from lumbering Nazi bombers near the British coast. Great footage - puts anything seen in "Memphis Belle" to shame in a hurry.
OK, there were some cheesy points: two American fighters manage - ala Star Wars - to out-fly, out-gun and out-fx 7 Japanese Zeros, which of course was great to watch but totally bogus in real life. Sorry, when the odds in aerial combat are 3-1, the 1 will lose everytime. But that scene was balanced with Cuba Gooding's shootdown from the deck of a stricken ship of a diving torpedo bomber - great effects.
Once the battle is completed, there is somewhat of a letdown, and it seems too long of a pause from when the bombs finish dropping over Oahu and when Doolittle's bombers drop American bombs on Tokyo. Still, this raid has seldom been touched by Hollywood, and it was refreshing to see.
My favorite scenes from the whole movie were, of course, the ones shown on the previews months ago - tiny snippets of Americana throughout the Hawaiian Islands rudely brought up cold by these menacing - and yet beautiful - Japanese planes. A woman with wet clothes from a clothesline; boy scouts on a tromp through the hills; a baseball game. Beautiful, mesmerizing, and yes, menacing.
My only regret - and something I was anticipated and was disappointed when it didn't occur - is that Bay failed to show snippes of Japanese everyday life in and around Tokyo suddenly ground to a halt as the B-25's roared overhead. There was one scene of several Japanese women looking up and running, as the bombers - getting kissed by ak-ak fire and smoke - can be seen in the corner of the screen at the top of a hill.
Regardless, this is a great summer movie that *will* entertain you. C'mon folks - that's all movies can do. Not teach our kids history. They get school for that. And it's not to tell how things happened back then. The History Channel and our grandfathers are for that. This movie tells a good story. That' what you get for your $8 bucks.
Enjoy it.