have our standards sunk this low? (SPOILERS)

Rating: Null/10 (1 June 2001)

why, oh why did jerry bruckheimer and michael bay re-make titanic? the parallels are startling, from the love triangle (even going as far as the not-quite-well-known british actress playing american) set against a national tragedy, to the talented actors wasted on a dismal script. and, like titanic, the film succeeds in its endeavor to make teenage girls care more about the strikingly handsome actors and their petty problems than the thousands of lives lost. some fans of the film may think i'm being overly harsh, and perhaps they are right. the film is visually stunning (if over-edited at times), although the action shots are sometimes cliched (planes going between buildings in an alley reeks of the star wars trilogy). the effects are spectacular, although i'm not sure the bruckheimer/bay philosophy of "bigger, faster, louder, more" is always appropriate, especially for a sequence that lasts upwards of 30 minutes. i got tired just watching it. however, the love story was incredibly contrived. kate beckinsale's character, evelyn is completely transparent and has no personality to speak of; the only background we get on rafe and danny is a 5-minute sequence at the beginning of the film where we see danny's WWI veteran father physically abuse him, and rafe "come to his rescue". other than that, they are cliched stereotypes: rafe (ben affleck), the cocky pilot (with an apparent learning disability to make him appear more realistic--an unresolved plot element which is mentioned at two points in the film and never again), and danny (josh hartnett), the soft-spoken shy guy who depends on rafe to boost his self-confidence. what we have is a love triangle that isn't really a triangle--danny doesn't get involved with evelyn until after rafe's "death," and after rafe comes back, neither one of them actually have much to do with her (except, of course, getting in a fist-fight and lamenting their love for the same woman--no matter that rafe had only known evelyn 4 weeks when he went off to england, and danny and evelyn had only had one real date--in modern hollywood, this is what passes for love). and speaking of that fist-fight, did it strike anyone else as odd that rafe and danny jump in the same car and escape, and in the very next scene, they are on the beach together as if nothing had happened? in any case, the love triangle should have been resolved during or directly after the pearl harbor bombing so that we could skip the last hour altogether. don't get me wrong, i actually enjoyed the doolittle's raid section, i just think it should have been its own movie. historically speaking, the film was correct in dates and large events, but there were a number of small inaccuracies. some of them have to do with modern equipment being visible on some of the ships in the harbor, and not many civilians would notice these. others, like attending the charlie chaplin film "the great dictator," which evelyn and danny find each other at in october of 1941 are possible, but not very plausible (the film was released in 1940 and i'm not sure how likely it would be to still be in theaters). the biggest anachronism comes from danny during the bombing when he says "i think world war II just started." at this point in history, the war was not being referred to as WWII yet. that name came later, at least in the united states. also, the japanese admiral speaks of "getting in the war" when they had BEEN in the war for nearly 10 years.
having not lived through world war II, i can't comment on the portrayal of the actual bombing or the japanese, but if michael bay was trying for the most PC script possible, i think he succeeded. sure, the american pilots call them "dirty japs," but i have a feeling this is one of the mildest names that would have been used for the people who bombed our harbor and killed thousands of american naval officers. i believe that most of them would have had quite a few more choice phrases for the japanese. with all the gore, mass death and haunting images of the wounded, i am amazed that this film squeaked by with a PG-13 rating. i can't imagine a realistic war film without an R rating, but then pearl harbor falls far short of realistic. it does not challenge the viewer visually or intellectually, and the actors try to make up for a horrible script, filled with what seems like every war cliche ever invented, but in the end, even they cannot save this film.