Disappointing, flawed...

Rating: 3/10 (28 April 2002)

I feel this had the potential to be one of the great films with the subject matter, but it falls way short.
Firstly, the love triangle device is tragically flawed because Josh Harnett and Ben Affleck play the exact same character. The beginning is totally cliched and the love story is mostly the same as well. If they were well done, it might be passable, but neither is even close to that level. Both the male leads and Kate Beckinsale have very poor chemistry together, so the love story is a complete dud.
It's a shame that the leads are so bad/hampered by directing/script because the supporting cast, especially Cuba Gooding, Jr and Jon Voight (as FDR) do a great job with their material. Both turn in the only likeable characters in the movie, and it's sad Gooding's role contains only a few minutes of screentime.
Unlike other movies from the Bay/Bruckheimer duo (Armageddon), the actual "friends" (supporting characters) are the same and barely have any development (even though the movie is loooooooong). Of note is a nearly unrecognizable Jennifer Garner pre-Alias star turn here. Dan Aykroyd is miscasted and Alec Baldwin is only passable in his role. No one really cares what happens to them, or who gets the girl in the end. Most of the attempts at humor are surprisingly lame.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor is generally really well done, technically, and the 40-minute scene or so is worth a rental on its own (just skip to that scene, then turn the movie off). The action scenes involving our heroes doesn't contain the necessary cliffhangers or intense action to carry the movie.
The last hour or so is blatantly tacked on and should have been another movie. At this point, the sympathy the movie has tried to conjure up for the Japanese side of the story (which was well done earlier) disappears and suddenly they are evil stock villains again.
So in summary, we have a movie that fails to be an action flick, fails to be a drama flick, fails to be a comedy, and fails to be romantic. The only thing left to rely on is to try to induce blind patriotism and hope that people think it's unpatriotic to call "Pearl Harbor" a bad movie.
Too bad this one didn't have a better script/direction, or it could have been great. Instead, it's mostly bad with a few good things (Gooding, Voight). A waste of potential, for sure.
3/10