That's "harbour" actually

Rating: Null/10 (29 November 2004)

Jerry Bruckheimer's latest large film - tipping ships over sideways, elevating Ben Affleck to Big Chin Leading Man, and not being as rude to the Japanese as perhaps one might have expected. Apart from the end bit.
December 7 1941 is a fairly important date in American history. The Japanese launched a surprise attack on the entire US fleet as it lay at anchor (read 'parked up') in Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian islands. As a result, President Roosevelt brought the USA into the war, and that was more or less that, according to people who aren't British. And that's 'harbour', anyway.
Our story follows two friends, Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, as they grow up obsessed with planes and flying, and then the war comes and they get drafted as cooks. No, wait Rafe  Affleck  falls in love with a nurse  Kate Beckinsale  and then gets shot down over France and disappears and Danny  Josh Hartnett  falls in love with her himself, and they end up naked in Pearl Harbor together. Phew. This takes about 4 days of screen time and you're wishing the Japanese would hurry up, when guess what? Yeah, Rafe turns up, not burnt or anything  he was, like, hiding with the French for a year or something! Amazing! The same guy wrote this wrote Braveheart, so if you swallowed Willy Wallace speaking French and knocking up the Queen of England, this is nothing.
So the love story comes to a head, and then the bombs start falling and the budget just triples, man. The critics hated the slush and okay'd the bangs, and some folks reviewing the DVD on Amazon obviously liked both and gave it 5 stars. This, in my opinion, would presumably make something like Runaway Bride into a work of immeasurable genius. What do they think is a BAD film?
What is wrong with this film? Almost everything. Casting, plot, pacing, length, breadth, spelling... It's full of really off-putting cameos. Examples include boffin-typecast Dan Ackroyd as the Navy 'Intelligence' man who thinks something's up because 40 billion tons of dangerous shipping has gone off the radar. Yeah, we know. Why didn't you? One of the one million Baldwin boys  the old one  strolls around in Indiana Jones's leather jacket preening his hair-do and fingering his cheque as some horrible psychotic pilot person, who resurfaces to lead us into the most startlingly irrelevant ending I have seen since the 1999 European Cup Final. Almost as meaningless is Cuba Gooding's cameo, as a frustrated boxing cook who beats up honkies from other boats. You can imagine my profound shock when he turns Real Sailor and shoots down some Japanese plane attacking His Ship. Bring back Jeff Chandler and back projection if this is progress.
The last hour is frankly unbelievable. The bacon sandwich dropped from my numbed fingers as the film resolutely refused to end. You see, after the Japanese go back to their ships  (Navy radar people: 'Oh, There they are!') there's what seems to be an entire other movie stuck on the end. We haven't finished with Rafe and Josh and Kate and that stuff yet  and not enough foreign people of dubious religious conviction have been sent to meet their particular maker of choice, obviously. 183 minutes is an awfully long time to spend watching people who you don't care about sort their problems out. Even if they do have guns.
The love story is a bit silly, something akin to the Titanic romance, except longer and with quiffs, and the action scenes are interesting from a technical point of view but do not disturb like Ryan or rouse like Braveheart. The film looks like they didn't really care  one of those times when the hype gets you into your seat and the producer runs to the bank before you can figure it out and ask for your money back. The best thing I can say about the whole thing is that at least it gives you the opportunity to re-tell the one about the half-black, half-Japanese bloke who every December 7 would attack Pearl Bailey.