The Belittling of an Historic Event

Rating: 4/10 (26 May 2001)

Many would agree that Pearl Harbor was Hollywood's attempt to cash in on yet another tragedy. As soon as Titanic grossed 1.8 billion dollars, somebody must have said "Hey, we can make some money if we just do this again, but with a different tragedy". This time they chose the destruction of the naval base on Pearl Harbor.
However, they failed to see the reasons why Titanic was such a good movie. It was successful because it developed its characters. A friendship slowly blossomed and then eventually turned into a love. Then, the huge disaster struck, but the audience was still highly curious what would happen to the two main characters. We wanted to know what there fate was to be. We cared for the story. Of course, the sinking of the Titanic was asthetically pleasing, but it honestly only acted as a wonderful bonus in addition to the beautiful story that James Cameron put together. And in the end, we are left with sadness both because of the result of the love story and the horrible fact that many people lost their lives. Yet, Pearl Harbor fails to do this. The first hour is filled with nothing but a emotionless love story that is poorly developed. Then, within a week Ben Affleck's character falls madly in love with Kate Beckinsale because, and get this, "she is so beautiful". Then, he goes away to war and supposedly dies. His best friend, Josh Hartnett falls for Kate Beckinsale after about a week and loves her also because "she is sooo beautiful". Of course, Affleck returns and is upset because the love that he developed for Kate Beckinsale within a week is challenged by Hartnett's 2 week relationship with Beckinsale. I just didn't buy it and it was very boring to watch.
Then, came the strong point of the film; the actual attack on Pearl Harbor. It was done brilliantly, and it made me realize what a tragedy this truly was. I was amazed, and it is truly the only reason that you should see this film. Unfortunately, the mood was ruined as the characters began to take on this ugly patriotic image in which they hated the Japanese and wanted to kill them right away by sending an air raid to seek revenge. Even worse, the film got supported an image that the Japanese were terrible and began to play uplifting music that would get us behind America's effort to go kill innocent people who were not involved in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. If I would have directed this movie, I would have shown it from both points of view. The Americans and the Japanese. The film made an attempt to do this, but really only depicted a sterotype on the Japanese that we have been trying for 50 years to get rid of. Now, America's youth who sees this movie will think that this is the way that everything happened and that we should be hateful towards the Japanese from this day forth. Wrong Wrong Wrong.
In any event, after depicting the tragedy in the middle of the movie and actually drawing true emotions from people, the film returns to its sappy, boring friendship story and even worse love story. In Titanic, we actually wanted to see what happened to the characters after the Tragedy, but in Pearl Harbor I was relieved that the disaster moment of the film gave me a break from these boring, underdevloped characters that I did not care about.
In conclusion, movies need to stay away from sacred historical events, until they are ready to deal with them properly. The best way to do it is to create a story around the event that took place, such as Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. This way you can establish charcters that the audience will truly adore and relate to and then show how an event affected their lives. Pearl Harbor simply belittles an American Tragedy by a stupid story which was simply constructed as an excuse to make the film.