Except for 20 minutes, utter garbage.

Rating: 1/10 (8 August 2003)

Possibly spoilers (though not much to spoil).
Essentially this movie is trying to be both "Titanic" (romance with a historcial event as background) and "Saving Private Ryan" (strarly realistic miltary drama) at the same time. Basic summation of plot: Guy 1 falls in love with this woman. Guy 1 disappears and is presumed dead, so Guy 2 (Guy 1's friend) falls in the love with the woman too. Guy 1 later shows up again, creating an awkward moment. Pearl Harbor happens. The characters involve themselves. Dolittle's raid happens. Guy 1 or Guy 2 dies, leaving the other one to take care of the woman who is pregnant with Guy 1 or Guy 2's child.
If you wondering why I only spend one sentence on the event that's the title of the movie, good. I am wondering why the title event takes up only 20 minutes out of the 3 hours of this movie.
That 20 minutes, seeing the actual Pearl Harbor attack, is the only redeeming feature of this movie. Special effects and cinemtography realistically and graphically portray the actual attack. See those 20 minutes.
As for the rest of the movie...
The romance is poorly written, and completely untinteresting. And SLOW. Ben Affleck gives his most wooden perforamnce ever, and for him that's really saying something.
As for the historic events leading up to the attack, the historical figures are a tad too prescient, knowing way more than they possibly should (as if they read ahead in the script).
A really silly moment is when you see the Japanese attack plans... carved into granite. Not kidding, they actually are, and what looks more like a momument in a park than a military headquarters.
After the attack, you hear one of the stupidest lines in the entire movie: "I think World War II just started!" Ridiculous, in that nobody would ever say that in 1941. There is no World War I yet (it was still just called "The Great War") and the term World War II wasn't coined until after 1945 when it ended. It really breaks the illusion of being at the even that the last 20 minutes did such a good job at.
You see the charachters get involved in a rediculous unrealistic way (though actions were based on actual historcial events, though they're GREATLY exxagerated here). The movie isn't satisfied with ending at the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, and moved right on to the Doolittle raid (after more boring attention to the romantic plot). Which leads to a predictable end after the raid (one of the 2 dies) in case you still care at this point.
Very slow moving, poorly written, boring movie. Except for the excellent 20 minutes of the attack, see that part then return this. Don't recommend you buy it.