Pearl Harbor wasn't the only thing bombed in this movie

Rating: 4/10 (19 November 2002)

What can I say about Pearl Harbor? When Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer set out to make this movie they wanted to make a powerful epic war film. They clearly missed the mark on this one. First of all who in their right mind would hire Michael Bay to direct a war film? I'll tell you who, Jerry Bruckheimer. The two together make a great team when making blow up action films, but dramatic movies are definitely not their forte. Michael Bay is no more capable of directing a war movie than David Lynch is capable of directing a movie that makes sense.
However I can't completely blame Michael Bay for this awful movie, or Jerry Bruckheimer for that matter. Clearly one of the biggest problems with this movie was casting the whiny Ben Affleck in the lead role. He is the worst cast war hero in the history of war films. I would have been ok with it if the character was supposed to be a whiny wimp, in fact I can't think of anyone better to play that kind of character than Affleck, but they tried to make his character this heroic, cool, pilot. His performance was nothing short of pathetic. There were parts of the movie I enjoyed, but coincidentally all those parts were when Affleck was supposedly dead (to bad he wasn't). Every moment Affleck was on the screen I wanted to throw the remote control at the t.v. You might as well have cast his dorky brother Casey for this part, that would have been a heck of a lot better.
The script definitely didn't help this movie much, but as a huge Randall Wallace fan I can't hold him responsible. He wrote the script that Bay and Bruckheimer wanted. Randall Wallace is a very corny dialogue writer and it usually works, in fact it's downright brilliant in movies like Braveheart and We Were Soldiers, but for some reason in this movie it just didn't work. Why is this? The answer is that he was just writing what they wanted, and who wouldn't write some sappy cornball movie when you're getting paid a truckload of cash.
The acting overall was wretched. Even Tom Sizemore disappointed in this one, mostly because he was playing the same character he always does. But I can't write this review without giving credit to Josh Hartnett and William Lee Scott. They turned in great performances considering what they had to work with.
All in all this movie was a sad excuse for a war film and an insult to the Pearl Harbor tragedy. Most of the time this movie looked like a pepsi commercial masquerading as a legitimate WWII movie. This movie was an insult to me as a fan of war movies and for that reason I can't recommend it. However if you like to torture yourself by watching garbage then by all means give it a whirl.
1 out of 10 (would be lower but the scale doesn't go down to minus 347)