Run.

Rating: 1/10 (22 October 2013)

This film is so bad, it's almost worth unclicking the 'contains spoilers' box, then being banned from ever reviewing again by including them anyway. But I won't, I'll be good.
Please, I beg of you, for the sake of all that is good and pure and right in this world, don't watch this moronic abomination of a film! As one can see by watching anything else Mechael Bay does, he's great at making things explode at slow motion montages, empty romance and irrelevant hot women, but who thought these were good ingredients for a real-life war film? Transformers, yes. The appalling opening actions (for the Americans, that is) of a catastrophic war spread across the entire globe? No.
It's a real shame, because there was a window for the actions of Pearl Harbor to be retold for a new generation; Tora! Tora! Tora! was 30 years old when 'PH' (the film will be 'PH' now) was released. Instead, a great chance has been missed. History takes a back seat and in its place we're given a clichéd love triangle, a brainless script and a over- sentimentalised score.
We're all familiar with the notion of girl and boy people falling in love, boy going off to war and girl hooking up with boy's best mate. If such a cliché is to be used, it's bearable if it's used only as a vessel to tell a real story by proxy. What Bay has done quite expertly is make a boring storyline the centrepiece, then blow up everything around it to make it seem exciting. What is unforgivable is that he has used real events to do this, cheapening the real loss of life and harrowing scenes that actually occurred. History is bent and twisted to make it seem more heroic and and thus palatable, yet Pearl Harbor was nothing of the sort. It was a calculated first strike from the Japanese that failed totally in its main goal and a mixture of dumb luck and bad calls with occasional moments of good sense from the Americans that combined to cause a colossal amount of damage and more importantly, a huge loss of life.
If an alien came down and you used 'PH' to show what happened on Dec 7 1941, he'd be forgiven in thinking the Americans won the battle! The Doolittle Raid was almost 5 months later and in that time the Japanese ran riot in the Pacific, most notably in the Java Sea, Guam and Wake Island. All of this is glossed over! If you want to see just how historically inaccurate this film is, check out the list of anachronisms and factual errors listed on IMDb.
Sadly, all you are left with is an extremely patchy romance and the odd big explosion. In other words; classic Michael Bay. He should not be allowed anywhere near history again, to make up for the faked that he wasn't anywhere near it for this film.
Do yourself a favour. Watch Tora! Tora! Tora! and then watch Princess Diaries. You'll get historical fidelity, some big explosions and then some good clean romance as well. And not a Michael Bay in sight.