The action impresses, the romance plods, the dialogue is horrible, the characters are cardboard and the clichés grate

Rating: Null/10 (5 May 2004)

Contains Spoiler!! A matter of weeks before he is due to leave for England having volunteered to fight with the RAF, Capt Rafe McCawley meets and falls for Evelyn Johnson. He leaves very much in love with her but, when he is supposedly killed in action, his best friend (Danny) has to tell Evelyn that he is dead. As they turn to one another for support and healing they gradually fall in love. When Rafe is found alive he returns to America and finds his best friend in love with his girlfriend. This complex love triangle is made even more complex when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour and draw America into World War II.
You can see why they made this film - a major emotional centrepiece, around which a Hollywood love story between beautiful people occurs; sounds like another Titanic right? I do not understand why that film became so very popular and showered with awards, but I do understand why Pearl Harbour did so badly critically (but it sadly still did make several hundred million dollars - something the gloaters tend to forget!). The good thing about the film is the action - it seems to be the only thing that Michael Bay can really do well. You can see where the money was spent and it is pretty exciting. The only reservation I had about it was that Bay cannot help but deliver the action like Bad Boys rather than Saving Private Ryan - in other words the sheer horror of the attack is lost in a sea of glossy special effects, slick camera movements and big bangs, it looks great but it is difficult to really be shocked or moved in the way that the events really should have. Sure, the shots of bodies and the hospitals sort of bring it home but you can't help but feel the majority of the action is rather soulless. Of course, very like Bay, he doesn't know when to end and after the attack he follows the action to America's retaliation - where Rafe `shows 'em what for' - here the action is silly and just far too simplistic for the subject involved.
I think it was the other `qualities' the film has that made it such a hated film. The romance that is supposed to engage us with the three main characters is horribly banal and only serves to make the film's first half feel significantly longer than it really is. The romance fails for two big reasons. First of all, there are zero characters; they are plodding cardboard creations with all-American qualities and strong jaw lines. They were never real people to me and I swear this film could have ended with each of them being torn to bloody shreds by Japanese bulldogs and I would have struggled to care less - even the almost constant use of Hans Zimmers' score can't make this emotionally involving. Secondly the script is a woefully inept piece of rubbish that makes the Telebubbies feel like the pinnacle of modern writing. At best the lines just seem clunky and unnatural; at worst they are heavy with cliché and just smack of lazy writing - when I'd heard Afflect shout `get me in a plane NOW' for the third time or Hartnett announce `world war 2 has started' (oh - so it didn't in 1939?) I was already starting to feel my ears bleed. Basically if it is not all clichéd tough talk then it is corny romance dialogue - neither work and only serve to further destroy the foundations of an already weak film.
The acting fits perfectly with the standard of characterisation and dialogue and is roundly average despite having a pretty impressive list of names in the cast. Affleck is not a leading man and nothing he has done since Good Will Hunting has convinced me that he can carry a film: like it or not, DiCaprio was part of Titanic's success - Affleck is part of Pearl Harbour's failing. He is nothing more than a rugged face, square jawed hero type American boy - the only silver lining to the film is that at least a good script wasn't wasted on his flat and uninvolving delivery. Hartnett is no better but least is pretty to look at; it's just a shame that that is all he is. Beckinsale is a nonentity who is given nothing to do and therefore does almost nothing. Why (or how) these two men fell for her was never made clear. Gooding Jr is so poorly used that I wondered why the film even bothered to keep him in it. He is poorly fitting to the period (talking in modern ethnic clichés - a further sign of lazy writing) and he exists to give us a vague focus on the ships and also be the first black soldier to get a medal (`but not the last' the film reassuringly confirms). As poorly used as they are, at least it is interesting to see faces like Jennifer Garner, Dan Aykroyd, Adam Baldwin, Sizemore, Voight, Tagawa, Everett, Diehl, Coates and Fichtner. The only shame is that most of them have little to do and that some of them just seem really out of place (Aykroyd and Tagawa in particular).
Overall, compared to the mix of spiteful or unfairly adoring reviews that are around, this might seem a balanced one but understand that I really do consider this a waste of film and time. Bay does the action with style but sadly missing the soul that the situation required. The romance is awful and is a major problem since this was supposed to be our foundation and the script shows a complete inability to develop characters or put anything other than clichéd dialogue into their mouths.