Spectacular war film with routine romantic drama...

Rating: Null/10 (20 December 2001)

If PEARL HARBOR had been made back in the '40s, you'd see a war film with a romantic triangle from stars like Tyrone Power, John Payne and Anne Baxter (ever see CRASH DIVE with Power and Dana Andrews both in love with Baxter?). What we have here is a good, old-fashioned romantic triangle yarn set against the spectacular bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The action scenes are awesome with the relentless attack portrayed with searing realism. And the History Channel documentary on Pearl Harbor is chock full of details used in the screenplay, even including the bit about the cook who seized his opportunity to be a gunner.
This is definitely a well-crafted film that shouldn't be panned as extensively as some of the reviewers here have chosen to do. The performances are first rate, sincere and earnest with Ben Affleck doing an outstanding job as Rafe, completely believable in his role as the pilot who is believed killed but returns to resume his romantic partnership with a nurse. Outstanding in supporting roles are Jon Voigt, strongly resembling FDR, and Alec Baldwin.
A disappointment is the score, which I assumed would make full use of '40 swing tunes from that era but instead uses a bland love song that sounds like a leftover from 'Titanic' and never uses the music in a way that evokes the 1940s. Nor does it have any power in the dramatic moments.
But above all, this is an enjoyable enough war film which relies heavily on the old-fashioned Hollywood triangle romances that came out of the '40s when patriotism was at an all-time high.