the Doolittle Raid section

Rating: Null/10 (26 August 2011)

Of the 3+ hours of Pearl Harbor a full 1+ hour is spent not on the attack on Pearl Harbor but on the Doolittle Raid, America's ineffective but highly symbolic revenge raid on Japanese cities. It should be a separate movie, and was obviously added by the studio to keep American audiences from feeling depressed at the end of the Japanese victory on Hawaii. Maybe a good business decision, but it was a poor dramatic decision.
The 1944 movie 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, with Spencer Tracy as Doolittle, already covered this story, although thankfully without trying to mix it with a silly love triangle. In several ways the old movie outdid the new one, mostly because it didn't use some of the terrible techniques that are spoiling so many movies for me these days. The main thing it avoided is the constant use of quick cuts, one camera shot replacing another after only a few seconds, supposedly to increase the sense of excitement. Unfortunately, it detracts from much of the pleasure of watching this kind of movie, the kind of thing I always enjoy, such as prolonged views of the aircraft and the carriers, the views from the air, a chance to look around and see some of the background details that may be completely miscellaneous but which add to the sense of reality, even if they're not exactly what the director wants us to focus on. The audience can also see that the real purpose of a lot of quick cuts is sometimes to hide things from us, to avoid showing a plane really gunning its engine for a while, trying harder and harder to get up to full power, then taxiing and taking off a short runway, for example, or a real view of Tokyo from the air. Pearl Harbor certainly does offer a lot through the use of computer graphics, but even then it does so only in fits and starts, in scenes that flash by too quickly to enjoy. In 30 Seconds Over Tokyo we fly with the crews for several minutes over the wave-tops toward Japan, the engines roaring in our ears, while in Pearl Harbor the trip is done in a couple of quick cuts.
Remember the Bruce Lee movies when martial arts were actually performed in front of the camera and you could see exactly what was happening? Today it's all done through quick cuts and film editing, and you know you're being cheated as you see one snippet of a kick, then another snippet of a back flip, both put together in such a way as to suggest an amazing, continuous action--but it's completely faked.
Please, Hollywood, stop with all the quick cuts. Let us actually LOOK at something!