American history in Michael Bay's hands? Not pretty.

Rating: 6/10 (30 May 2001)

Pearl Harbor. The mere mention of those words arouse a lot of emotions in most Americans. Patriotism, for one. Anger, maybe. And yet somehow this movie manages to trivialize the whole business. SPOILERS The name of the movie suggests that it should be a bold, sweeping view of the Japanese sneak attack on the American naval base, and its effects on America, Japan, and the world as we know it. That is not the movie that I watched. This movie concerns only the effect on a rather dull love triangle, with a few snippets of Cuba Gooding Jr. and Jon Voight acting presidential for good measure.
The movie begins with shots of two small boys, and we know that they will grow up to be Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett; we have seen the trailers, after all. And indeed they do, they grow into the hunky, mach, back slapping pilots that we see ten minutes later, all grown up. Their names are Rafe and Danny, and they are best friends. Rafe falls in love with a nurse named Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale), later is sent to Britain to fight the Nazis. He is reported dead, and that's when Danny becomes romantically involved with Evelyn. The conflict really starts to heat up when Rafe comes back, not only alive, but monumentally p***ed-off that his best buddy moved in on his girlfriend.
This love triangle business is okay, but its not really what we came to the theater for, and its not long before we are checking our watches, saying "Hey, aren't there supposed to be some explosions in this movie?" Indeed there are, and this is what Michael Bay is really good at giving us. It doesn't dissappoint, visiting familiar Bay territory: shouting, shooting, slow motion shots of men dying while the orchestra plays solemnly in the background.
My problem with the movie is this: it doesn't give us a single character that we remotely care about. Rafe and Danny are both slightly annoying, the love story with Evelyn unconvincing. I've seen better love triangles on Jerry Springer. Whoever wrote the script has a knack for writing memorably cheesy dialogue ("I've given my whole heart to Danny," Evelyn says sweetly, "but I don't think I'll ever look at another sunset without thinking of you."). When the attack finally came, it was too late for the film; the Japanese were bombing the snot out of them and I just didn't care. And the action sequence, while somewhat exciting, was a little too violence glorifying for me. When Rafe and Danny lead separate Japanese planes on a crash course for each other, that was when I held up my hands in surrender. That kind of stuff is okay for The Rock or Armageddon, but this is American History, for crying out loud! Show a little respect!
The whole time I watched the movie, I was wondering what the veterans who were sitting just behind me thought of the movie. The hot shot pilots shooting off smart-alecky lines, the flirty nurses looking alluring while jabbing syringes into peoples hindquarters...this is the greatest generation? Please. This is a joke.