Want a documentary, watch Tora Tora Tora; want a great film, Pearl Harbor is perfect.

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2003)

As the music fades, and the screen blackens, one can hardly help but sigh. The movie was good; it was darn good. Everything about it. The acting, directing, music, and the incredible CG were wonderfully combined to form the summer blockbuster Pearl Harbor. Upon reading reviews of this film, it is hard not to notice the terrible blasts it has been receiving from seemingly heartless movie critics and viewers. They complain and complain about it, when they fail to see what it truly is: a tale of "the end of innocence... and the dawn of America's greatest glory." What better way to show this, than with a love story, which is what Pearl Harbor is above all. It is a love story involving three characters, and how the unthinkable at Pearl Harbor shaped their lives, as well as the lives of Americans all over the country. Its purpose was not to perfectly document the events that occurred on that fateful day in December 1941, but rather to show in a way that only Hollywood can, the sights, feelings, and agony that there must have been on that day; and to show younger generations an era in which men and women were so willing to put their country above themselves. Pearl Harbor successfully captures the brutality of war, and the courage of the men and women who fought it. It is an epic tale of love and war, and a time when heroes would rise and fall; but America would prevail.