Underwhelming 3 hours, drags a lot

Rating: 4/10 (28 January 2015)

"Pearl Harbor" is one of the most known films by director Michael Bay, a man who is known for works that mostly put visuals over everything and rarely convince through dialog, drama or suspense. His other works include "Transformers" and "Armageddon". "Pearl Harbor" scored four Academy Award nominations in the technical categories and won one of them. However, that is almost the only positive thing I can say about it. This film which runs for over 3 hours had just too many parts that added really nothing and just made it very boring to watch. The occasional parts of humor ("I lick you" instead of "I like you") did not work at all and even if (or maybe as) the script came from the writer of "Braveheart", the screenplay did not seem particularly refined.
The first 30 minutes of the film are about the relationship between Affleck's and Beckinsale's characters. They fall in love, but he goes to war right afterward. We see lots of battle scenes next, especially with planes and it slowly moves towards the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. What I found strange though was how the scenes that involved the Japanese generals talking about the attack felt so unconnected to the action including Affleck and Hartnett as if we had two different films. Then there were also unrealistic scenes, like Cuba Gooding Jr. beating up a white man in a fight after he was badly beaten up before. A few words changed the outcome? Not gonna happen. By the way, Gooding Jr. already was an Academy Award winner when this was made and so was Affleck. He got his second not too long ago, again not for acting, but Hartnett, a big prospect almost 15 years ago, has become pretty irrelevant by now and is back to television work, even if that, with the great state TV is in these days, isn't even a negative thing.
But back to the movie. One of its biggest problems is that none of the characters were particularly likable, especially not Affleck's. Another criticism is that the acting simply isn't good. Those who give solid performances (like Alec Baldwin, Michael Shannon) only play minor parts or roles just like they usually do, like in Baldwin's case an authority figure. So yeah, after 48 minutes, Affleck's character is already dead (seemingly) and I felt the speech that Hartnett's character gives at the funeral is something that did not come off as authentic, maybe because I never really felt the two had such a strong "best friend" connection.
Also I have to say that I was not even wowed by the special effects and other technical aspects of the film. Maybe that came because the drama and relationship aspects weren't interesting. It's all style over substance, even if the Academy begs to differ. There was one scene when Japanese planes fire at a car with the two protagonists inside, but all of a sudden stop firing. I did not understand why as the car obviously was still driving, so somebody in there must have been alive. I guess there are more plot holes in this movie if you took a closer look to find them. That is just one that I remembered. Also, with what the United States did to Japan later on, the film was slightly too patriotic for my taste.
To end the review on a more positive note, I would like to say that I liked the song "There You'll Be" and I would not have minded it winning the Oscar. However, as a whole I cannot recommend watching this film. Looking at the fact that it ended up among the 10 most seen films from 2001 at the box office, far too many watched it already in proportion to its (lack of) quality.