Could have done better

Rating: 5/10 (23 June 2001)

It was okay. It had its moments, but there is infinite room for improvement. To begin with (spoilers ahead), the title seems to indicate that the attack on Pearl Harbour is the focus of the movie. Then you go to see it, and apparently the movie can't decide if its focus is the attack or the love triangle between the main characters. This would have been a much better movie if it had just one plot instead of three. It spends an hour and a half giving you the love triangle in spades, with the occasional (VERY occasional--often less than two-minute) visits to Japan. Then it spends an hour on the attack, which is the most well-done part of the movie, as it ought to be. Then the last half hour depicts the planning and execution of the Doolittle Raid. But it constantly cuts back to that love triangle, often annoyingly so. It's like the movie is saying, "Okay, let's watch the Japanese plan their attack. Oh, there's our lovebirds! This is more interesting. Let's watch this for a while."
There were a lot more possibilities. They could have had, say, two sailors on the Arizona, and intertwined their personal lives with the possibility of a sneak attack. That would have given the film some continuity at least, and some great drama could have come of the loss of almost 1,200 shipmates on the Arizona. And they could have done a lot more with Cuba Gooding Jr.! He's a marvelous actor, and it's a shame he had such a small part.
Oh, and don't even get me started on the modern warships that inundate this film. Spruance-class destroyers and Nimitz-class aircraft carriers in 1941? I Don't Think So. Try not to notice the steam catapults on the flight deck when Doolittle takes off from the Hornet, willya? I'd like to think that in every historical film, there's a different point of view that can explain how accurate or inaccurate it seems. No such point of view exists in this case.
But, as I say, the movie does have its moments. The effects are great, and the depiction of the true grit of war is the best since "Saving Private Ryan." As I watched men being blown all over the harbour, I thought, "I really don't need to see this." But then I said to myself, "Self, you're just watching this in a movie theater. How do you think it felt for the guys who were ACTUALLY THERE?" And for perhaps the first time in film history, we see the real heroism of the medical corps, something that I've never seen treated in detail. Finally, the emergency that results in the early takeoff of the Doolittle Raid holds an excitement that just didn't exist in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo."
It's one of those movies that you might want to walk in on when it's about one-third finished, and have somebody tell you what went on during the parts that you missed. I'm sure it'll be nominated for the Harry Awards on the History Channel next year, but I doubt it'll place very high.