Craptacular

Rating: 2/10 (12 June 2004)

This movie is easily the most long winded, pompous, and self serving piece of crap I have ever had the misfortune to see. Hollywood has got a formula for movies like this, and it's so predictable and hackneyed, it makes you want to get up and scream the rest of the plot to other people watching with you. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was done terribly, and I think it was stupid to focus on a couple of yahoos who did nothing more than shoot down the tiniest fraction of a fraction of a massive attacking air fleet. The Japanese were also done terribly in this film, being portrayed as intensely remorseful and afraid of what they did to America. Only one man of import in Japan thought this: Yamamoto. And guess what: he mostly ignored these thoughts. The rest of Japan was ecstatic, becoming doubtful only after around Midway. The Doolittle raid was blown way out of proportion: It was NOTHING. In fact, it was almost laughable to see these men risk their lives and important military hardware to strike fear in the heart of...you guessed it, no one. In the end, Hollywood needs to stop making movies about Pearl Harbor. It's been done to death, and never done very well, mostly because it's depressing and there's nothing uplifting about it, which is what WWII movies invariably have to be. To solve that, Hollywood throws in a bunch of sappy love interests and "poor little soldier boy" stories. What the hell, they may as well have had every man who died in the movie say, "Two more weeks, and I'm retiring to Montana to be a farmer." It might have been more effective. Big thumbs down.