Stunningly awful, neither informs nor entertains.

Rating: 1/10 (9 December 2001)

Well, it's out on DVD, and I finally saw this mess. It is a 2 hour movie bloated out to 3 hours because someone told the director that all epics must run 3 hours, whether or not they need to. If this movie didn't have such a serious subject, I would have been laughing out loud at its utter badness. I knew I was in for trouble when the movie names a Tennessee farmboy Rafe (yeah right) and the island of Hawaii contains not one native islander, especially before it was officially a state. The first third of the movie is totally out of place, directed more in tone with slapstick flicks like "1941" and "Biloxi Blues."
The love triangle is so poorly handled, the writers of soap operas would be ashamed. The infamous raid sequence is technically excellent, but it is shot so poorly you barely tell what's what, and it's been disgracefully cleaned up to a PG-13 rating. Men are hit with huge caliber bullets designed to rip apart planes and they just fall down. I also rolled my eyes at the American moron yelling about World War II is starting, when it's been going on in the rest of the world for years. By the time the final act, Doolittle's Raid over Tokyo kicks in, you stopped caring. This movie is a travesty.
Oh, and if you think that not liking this junk means I'm not patriotic, you can kiss the four stripes on my sleeve.