Bruckheimer and Bay must pay for their crimes

Rating: 4/10 (4 March 2002)

This movie takes an incredible premise and stomps the life out of it. This movie should have been called Love on the Beach. The trailer makes it like it's all about the attack. This is wrong. For the first hour and a half you will be treated to Ben Afleck trying very hard to be tough, Kate Beckinsdale trying even harder to be the strong woman, and Josh Hartnett trying to avoid becoming Freddie Prinze Jr. Then finally you are hit with THE GREATEST BATTLE THAT YOU WILL EVER SEE ON FILM. This scene shows that the past 1 1/2 hours that you p***ed away was not in vain. Every angle is explored as the Japanese wreak havoc on the US fleet. The CGI Zeros look incredibly real and you are treated to Cuba Gooding Jr. fighting to find a reason why he signed on to do this film. Getting behind a dual .50cal AA mount would be enough for me but I'm straying here. Anyways, Jon Voight turns in the best acting in the movie as FDR. Unfortunatly the B twins figured we wouldn't be interested in seeing how the Japanese went about planning the attack. Minimal attention is paid to them in the film. A suitably sappy score underlines this sorry excuse for a war film and I felt cheated as I walked out of the theater. Bottom Line: Buy it if you like the Pearl Harbor scene, otherwise just let your girlfriend rent it and tell her to call you in when the bombing starts.