Good film. This review which follows is perhaps the most balanced anyone will find.

Rating: Null/10 (1 March 2002)

some SPOILERS will follow...
I purposely waited until "Pearl Harbor" was on DVD so that I could see it not only in the comfort of my own home theater, but also take advantage of all the interesting extras sure to accompany the DVD. I am not disappointed. What follows are (1) a review of the film itself, (2) a commentary on the misleading negative reviews, (3) a short discussion of the statistics of IMDb votes, and (4) a comment on the DVD itself.
REVIEWING THE FILM - The film itself is rather long, about 3 hours, on 2 DVDs. As we see from the "extras", great care was taken to incorporate realistic stories composited from several real Pearl Harbor heros, and to accurately recreate the horror of the surprise attack at 7:55AM on Sunday, December 7, 1941 by the Japanese. It is a highly pro-USA account, but considering that this is a "movie", and the target audience was primarily American, that makes sense.
The story starts in 1923, in Tennessee, where boyhood friends Rafe and Danny pretend to fly and shoot down Germans. Cut to 1941, Long Island, where both of them are fighter pilots. Rafe falls for pretty nurse, Evelyn, then is asked to go to England to help fight the Germans. Very successful there, he is eventually hit, ditches, is recovered by French, but presumed dead. Distraught and now both assigned to Pearl Harbor, Danny and Evelyn become friendly, real friendly, she becomes pregnant. Rafe is alive, he shows up, there is an emotional struggle among the three to do the right things.

Then the attack comes, all three are heroic, Evelyn in triage, Rafe and Danny shooting down 7 enemy planes. As the war progresses, Jimmy Doolittle conceives of a plan to launch bombers from a carrier, and Rafe and Danny volunteer to participate. The success of this mission is pivotal in the Japanese feeling vulnerable while the USA feels they can win the war. Rafe survives but Danny doesn't. In the end, Rafe and Evelyn and young son "Danny" are seen building their lives, all forever changed by the events of WW II.
Is the movie perfect? Far from it. Are there some cheesy lines? Sure there are, mostly because it seeks some "entertainment" value. However, the film overall is a fine achievement, showing through a fictional love story how some of the people likely were affected during that historic period. Plus, it contains 30+ minutes of truly magnificent re-enactment of that short but critical attack on Pearl Harbor. It cannot help reminding us how horrible war is.
My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, everyone should see it and understand it for what it represents, without being overly critical of what some may consider its weaknesses. We thought Ben Affleck was very effective as Rafe and Kate Beckinsale as Evelyn. The best acting accomplishment, however, was Jon Voight as President Roosevelt. The IMDb ratings for "Pearl Harbor" cluster near "7" and that, or "8", is an appropriate rating, compared to all other modern feature films.
MISLEADING NEGATIVE REVIEWS - "Pearl Harbor" is a victim of "the bandwagon effect", where people read the opinions of others then adjust their own opinions to reflect the majority. At release, many well-known critics (see Ebert, for example) said some very negative things about this film. General audiences then went to see the film, and, jumping on the bandwagon, formed negative opinions also. Reading many "user reviews" reveals that the majority of the unbiased reviews are quite good, which is appropriate. To learn more about this do an internet search on "bandwagon effect" and read several of those summaries.
STATISTICS - The 13% of "1" IMDb votes for "Pearl Harbor" and the 15% of the "10" votes are equally out of place. Remove those two extremes and the votes cluster strongly around a rating of "7" and are fairly normally distributed. Compare that, for example, to a less-emotional recent film, "The Yards", which clusters much like "Pearl Harbor" but without the unusual "1" and "10" votes. "Pearl Harbor's" current rating is 5.8 while "The Yards" is 6.7, with almost identical median votes. All of which supports the contention that this film deserves a rating of about "7" overall.
THE DVD - As DVDs go, this one deserves a "10". It has either Dobly 5.1 or DTS 5.1 sound selectable. As I have found in all other DVDs where both are available, the Dolby sound track is much more aggressive in the low bass region. Example, at my normal volume setting for movies (-20dB), and at my listening position, the first big explosion at 90 minutes into the film recorded 102dB in Dolby but only 93 dB in DTS. Since the dB scale is logarithmic, that represents EIGHT TIMES as much sound on the Dolby track. That is not a subtle difference! The DTS track overall is more realistic, however with a great subwoofer the Dolby track is certainly more exciting.

Disk #2 has the last 1/3 of the film, plus two very nice extras. The first is a 47-minute "making of" which in many ways is more fascinating than the film itself. Just money would not have made this film. The men and women behind the location scouting, first-hand accounts, filming, special effects did almost unimaginable work to get this film made.
The second nice extra is a 45-minute History Channel special on the "Unsung Heros" of Pearl Harbor. Watching it convinces us of the accuracy and validity of the story told in this film. As I have said in other reviews, anyone still watching movies in the theater or at home on VHS are missing at least half, sometimes more, of the enjoyment of recent-release movies. DVD has come of age and it is the only way to go.