pretty awful

Rating: 1/10 (13 October 2002)

The acting was uniformly bad. The historical inaccuracies were too numerous to itemize. The special effects were cheesy. But some of the nurses were very cute. I like Kate Beckinsale a lot, and maybe this movie was good for her career. But it doesn't look good on anyone else's filmography.

Now, I admit that it's much more difficult to make a realistic WWII movie now than it was 50 or even 40 years ago. But it can be done. Saving Private Ryan is a good example, HBO's Band of Brothers is another. Filming a simulated attack on Pearl Harbor is more difficult than a simulated assault on an empty beach. But if you're going to spend $150 million on a movie, the result should be a film worth watching. This one rates as equal to a fairly mediocre network mini-series.