Awful movie -- Rent Tora! Tora! Tora! instead

Rating: 1/10 (25 July 2008)

This is another movie that I borrowed from the local library. I didn't want to be responsible for a single cent on the bottom line of this travesty.
Unless you're a fan of cliché cinema, you can watch the first half of the film on 10x fast forward and not miss a thing. It's essentially the same as Titanic before the ship starts sinking.
In theory, the climactic attack sequences should be the crowning glory of the movie. The movie has the benefit of 30 years improvement in special effects technology over 1970s Tora! Tora! Tora!. And yet, I didn't find it as impressive -- At least partially because the digital effects artists got too clever. What was seen in Tora! Tora! Tora! was restricted to what could actually be done with the real airplanes used to shoot the scenes, or in model work. Pearl Harbor doesn't operate under this restriction, and thus the attacking planes do all kinds of absurd things that would never have happened in reality -- I guess because it looked cool. As a result of this, what should be the dramatic highlight of the film ends up coming off like a cartoon, or a cheesy video game. The earlier film, while not having the benefit of recent CGI technology, at least attempts to reproduce the events as they actually happened.
If you're looking for a brainless action movie with pretty-boy actors, this will do -- just skip over the first half. If you're interested in history, and want to know what really happened at Pearl Harbor (and equally importantly, why), watch Tora! Tora! Tora! instead.