What a waste....

Rating: 4/10 (10 July 2001)

....of $140 million and 3 hours of my time.
A war movie / love story that fails at both, this has neither the heroism of "Saving Private Ryan", the REAL romance & dialogue of "From Here to Eternity", or even the maritime fx of "Titanic".
A terribly corny script, mediocre acting (given their assigned dialogue, that is understandable), too much bombing & strafing ("Want another explosion here, Jerry?" "Nah, gimme four more kabooms there!"), some bad fx (especially one scene where the US fighters being pursued by Zeroes are flying between the camera & a not-too-distant hanger and both planes appear to be about 8 feet long), some bad "newsreel camera" shots (per "...Ryan") that are so jerky as to be unwatchable, the "hazy" camera shots in the hospital (several people where I watched this went to complain to the theater management about the projector being out of focus), too many quick cuts when people are just talking, too many full-facial shots that took up the entire screen (a person can take just so many nasal cavaties), too much of Ben A's "classic" smirk which he tries to pass off as a tough-guy attitude, and lastly and sadly, not enough of Cuba Gooding as Dorie Miller, one of the real-life heroes of that day. He was the genuine hero, not the fantasy flyboys (Ben & Josh) around whom the entire 3 hours mistakenly revolved.
This movie may excite some in the audience who drool over anything Ben A appears in, but in the long run it will be put aside on the action-film shelf along with "Independence Day" and "Armageddon" & will never be in the same class as "Saving Private Ryan", "From Here to Eternity", or "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo".