Overblown rubbish, don't bother

Rating: 1/10 (1 May 2013)

I had the displeasure of seeing this in the cinema in 2001. I got free tickets somehow, I think I won them in a raffle or something.Had I known it was going to be this bad, you couldn't have paid me to see it. I have seen it a couple of times on TV since and have sat through parts of it due to sheer boredom, a mistake I am unlikely to repeat while I still have full control of my cognitive faculties. This film is shallow, historically inaccurate, dumb, loud and jingoistic. It's an insult to the Americans, the Japanese, and the film industry. John Wayne's guilt at dodging the draft caused him to churn out war movies that are more watchable than this turkey. The acting is woeful and the characters are paper thin. Affleck and Hartnett mumble through their performances.Alec Baldwin has a few good lines as Jimmy Doolittle, but he's wasting his time here. Beckinsale is underfed eye-candy. Cuba Gooding Jr plays Token Black Guy, and the normally watchable and engaging John Voight is reduced to a caricature of FDR.
The attack on Pearl itself is kinda shoehorned in there as an afterthought, oh yeah we've spent 2 hours doing this love story, we might as well put some ships blowing up while we're at it. There are some good VFX in the attack sequence, but slick graphics and explosions do not make a film. Oh wait, I forgot, Michael Bay directed this, didn't he. Oh well. Rent Tora, Tora, Tora instead, as so many others have already said.