Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?

Rating: 1/10 (12 February 2008)

Never before has one of the 'Team America:World Police" songs been so apt. This is one of the worst films that has ever been made. Pearl Harbour is one of the most important events in the the history of the USA yet Michael Bay managed to butcher it completely with an overly and blindly patriotic film interwoven with a hideously written script and awful acting from all of the leads in the film, not even sparred by a former Oscar winner Cuba Gooding who delivers a complete turkey in his version of a 1940's Snoop Dog.
This film did not even deserve one star, but I gave it one out of pity. After watching it, you will not feel a deep sense of gratitude for what happened in the war as you do with truly great war films. Instead, you wonder what on earth it is you have just watched. YOu wonder why you wasted such a lot of money on such absolute tripe.
First off, Affleck and Beckinsale have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever in this film. Their relationship seems awkward and at times blatantly false. Furthermore, Affleck stooped to an acting low rivalled only by his performance in Gigli, one which did no justice to the first world war. Bay seemed more concerned with getting young American children to salute and to paint the Japanese as animalistic, and the British RAF as completely incompetent, whilst completely ignoring the fact war had been established in Europe and had been raging for a few years before this, epitomised by Dannys (Harnett) awful phrase "I think World War Two just started" after being asked what happened.
A script interwoven with horrible clichés which look like they have been taken from just about every war film ever made.
To put it simply, Pearl harbour is a film for a blindly patriotic American, and for people who do not need a storyline, or do not need well built characters, or do not need to see good performances and only want to see over done war scenes that prehaps overdo the actual destruction that was done, and turn Pearl Harbour from the provoked retaliation of the Japanese (a point which is overlooked) into the start of a war which pitts the world against the United States.
Do not waste time or money seeing this film. And if you do, after reading this and the countless other negative reviews, then you deserve the disappointment that is coming your way.