Shame on the director and writer

Rating: Null/10 (21 February 2006)

How can you turn such a powerful moment in American history into a trite love triangle?!! I've been privileged to know and read about so many amazing stories that occurred to sailors, soldiers (on both sides) and civilians alike that defy description. Another film that any decent writer would have a field day with. There is so much grist for the mill you wouldn't be able to include it all.
While the earlier movie version of Pearl Harbor, "Tora, Tora, Tora" is done in a documentary style it stays true to the myriad real-life characters and is so well acted by a rich cast of veteran actors. Mr.'s Bay and Wallace could take a lesson from earlier movies like "Tora,Tora, Tora and the classic "30 Seconds Over Tokyo". The latter does have a corny love-story at it's heart but is also a terrific drama and action adventure too that is respectful of the amazing couraqge of those heroes involved.
And as far as that central love triangle of "30 Seconds...", we do have to remember the time period it was done in. What might seem dated now was quite meaningful then to the thousands of men that went off to war and the women who were left behind to keep the nation's economy going and support the country and the troops. The love story as depicted in "Pearl Harbor" has none of the vital intensity of the earlier film and the love triangle is just unnecessary.
Interesting is the fact that despite the main sell of the film which was it's amazing special-effects; this even suffers in comparison to one key scene in ""30 Seconds...". Compare the scenes in both movies where the first pilot successfully takes off under the required distance needed to safely get off the eventual aircraft carrier. The 1942 version looks real while in the Michael Bay film we see the pilots cheering as the plane passes over the line and doesn't even leave the ground in the shot!
Cuba Gooding gives the best performance of the film portraying real-life hero, Doris Miller. The inclusion of Miller as a supporting character was the best idea that the screenwriter had and Gooding as usual, turns in an excellent performance. Other good performances in the film are; Tom Sizemore reprising his excellent Private Ryan performance as a tough soldier and Jon Voight's game effort as Pres. Roosevelt.
Shameful in the film is the treatment and portrayal of the Japanese who are treated as caricatures. The wonderful Mako is wasted in his portrayal Admiral Yamamoto. His famous "..waking a sleeping giant." line is done as a throw-away. Yamamoto was such an extra-ordinary person that even the American pilot who shot him down and killed him during the war later came to revere him for his intelligence, honor and vision. There is even the element of the mystical about Yamamoto. He was reported to have had a premonition about his death and on the day he made his ill-fated plane trip, he purposely put on the dress uniform one would wear for a funeral.
Ben Afleck and Kate Beckinsale are weak as the main characters. Josh Hartnett, a good actor, just seems whiny. In the face of all that's going on-- you feel like, who cares about these three! What a shame, a waste of money. One more film where special effects are relied upon to carry the film. Just imagine if 1/10 of the effort that was put into the special effects was put into the story itself. It would have been a more worthy memorial to our fallen and living heroes of Pearl Harbor. as "Saving Private Ryan" was to the fallen and living heroes of D-Day.