Watch It for the Character Actors

Rating: 6/10 (7 September 2010)

Michael Bay clearly went to a lot of trouble and expense to film this reenactment of the events which led America into WWII. Unfortunately I have to agree with many of the other reviewers here and state that "Pearl Harbor" is not a very good movie. It has its points: The battle scenes are very well filmed and the attention to period detail is wonderful. The soggy love story at the movie's center is not.
As with most epics, playing "spot the star" here is lots of fun. I didn't recognize Jon Voight as FDR. Colm Feore as Admiral Kimmel, Alec Baldwin as James Doolittle orchestrating the bombing of Tokyo, Dan Aykroyd as a military codebreaker racing against time to decipher Japanese messages - they're all great to watch. Cuba Gooding Jr. is also good as a black seaman who finally gets his chance to see combat during the raid.
For good measure, Bay throws in the Tokyo raid which took place four months after Pearl Harbor. This makes for a good one-two plot punch, but the first hour of the movie with its excruciatingly slow buildup could and should have been chopped. I fast forwarded through a lot of it. The most ridiculous part of the film's plot has to be Kate Beckinsale's pregnancy, which is magically never visible even after the Tokyo bombing (by that point she'd have to be six to seven months along)! It's a miracle baby!
If you're in the mood to see a lushly filmed modern take on Pearl Harbor and it's a slow afternoon, you'll probably enjoy this. If you want to see a more tightly filmed version, try one of the others such as "Tora! Tora! Tora!"