Not as good as it should have been

Rating: 7/10 (15 December 2001)

Read my lips - too dang long! The story is weakened mainly because of the length. It would have been much more intense had it been shorter. The acting is for the most part good, although I thought Alex Baldwin was asleep at the wheel as Jimmy Doolittle. This is countered by strong performances from Kate Beckinsale, Josh Hartnett, Ben Affleck and a truly outstanding job by Jon Voight as President Roosevelt. The ships used in the film were all wrong, with the aircraft carriers having angled flight decks, which were not developed until after the war (and then by the British). In addition, none of the Japanese carriers which took part in the Pearl Harbor raid had large portside island structures, which the ones in the film had. The ships shown at Pearl Harbor before the raid included modern US Navy Perry-class frigates. They should have used models for reality! But overall, the film tried to encompass too much of the war. It could have been a much more powerful film if they'd ended it as Roosevelt was declaring war. But they had to keep going and went way too far. The entire second half of the film occurred several months after the Pearl Harbor attack and therefore didn't belong in this film at all.