You can't be all things to all men

Rating: Null/10 (29 May 2001)

I'm the daughter of a WWII vet, a computer geek, a history buff, and a cinephile. Parts of PH appealed to me, and others annoyed me mightily.
Pearl Harbor is not the seminal film on the events on 12/7/41-- that would be Tora, Tora, Tora. It's not the best love triangle story with a war backdrop-- that would be Casablanca. It's not even the best film about WWII and relationships set in Hawaii-- that would be From Here to Eternity.
What it is is a pretty good entertainment film that gets (most of) the history it bothered to include right, has some wonderful images, some truly stupid dialog, and some nice looking people. It made great use of technology. The costuming was well done. The cinematography, for the most part, was extraordinary. (The blurred shots during the hospital scenes were classic Bruckheimer, but bordered on the absurd.) The action scens harked back to an earlier time, pre Saving Private Ryan, when an uninterrupted half hour of super-realistic gore was thought to be overwhelming to the audience.
But it certainly didn't teach anyone anything about why the Japanese felt they had to attack us in the first place. It took three steps toward making Admiral Yamamoto and the Japanese troops seem intelligent and human, but then dropped the ball completely. It took 4 steps toward discussing the arrogance and mismanagement in the American military that made Pearl ripe for that kind of attack, and dropped the ball again. The story of Doris Miller aside, it completely ignored the rampant racism in the US military in the 30's and 40's. It didn't even suggest the complex racial and ethnic issues in Hawaii. It canonized FDR, who may have been one of our greatest leaders, but was hardly a candidate for sainthood.
Incidentally, for all of you who are screaming about the grafting of a love story on to the history of 12/7, do the research. The working title of this film was "Tennessee" and was supposed to be about the spirit of patriotism and volunteers.... It became "Pearl Harbor" later.
I didn't regret the time or money spent on seeing this film---it was appealing enough to me on many levels to overcome it's shortcomings on other levels-- but understand and be happy with what it is you're going to see.... This is no more a documentary about WWII than Zhivago was a documentary about the Russian Revolutions. And, I gotta tell you, it is far better than Gladiator, and that won last year's Oscar.