Bad, very bad

Rating: 4/10 (19 July 2007)

A few nice flying scenes and that is it. The romantic thing was bunk. Our two heroes were very loosely based on two real men, Ken Taylor and George Welch. Two Air Corps fighter pilots who managed to get to their planes and take off. They did shoot down some Japanese planes but the incident is much better re-enacted in the movie TORA-TORA-TORA (a much better film in all regards). Both pilots survived the war.
In one scene you see a Japanese Zero fly by with a camera mounted on it's fuselage. The Japanese planes were painted the wrong color. They were Navy gray but someone decided the green looked better on camera. Why not just remake the battle of Britain and made the Germans fly pink dive bombers.
The bit with the mechanics climbing the control tower and shooting down a passing plane with small arms was STUPID and the bit where they run 2 Japanese planes into each other is off the BS meter.
By the way, Jimmy Doolittle (played by Alec Baldwin) was bald. Doris Miller (Cuba Gooding Jr.) was an huge man. That is why he was a boxer. Miller did man a gun and shoot at shoot down 1 or 2 attacking Japanese planes for which he received the Navy Cross. I think the official record show 2 shot down and 1 damaged. He was killed later in the war. None of Doolittles Raiders were at Pearl Harbor during the attack and no fighter pilots were chosen.