Titanic+Saving Private Ryan should be good right? Wrong!

Rating: 2/10 (28 February 2014)

The Titanic of war movies, Pearl Harbour sets a clichéd, cardboard cut out love story against the backdrop of a tragic historical event and despite blatantly borrowing from great films such as Titanic and Saving Private Ryan, it is a total misfire that fails to respect its audience or its subject matter. In fleeting moments the film shows potential: An inexplicably committed Hans Zimmer creates a very good soundtrack, while the visuals are stunning. From time to time, Michael Bay who if there was any justice in the world would be a pyrotechnics expert rather than a director, shows flashes of vision in his directing, particularly in the indulgent 40 minute attack sequence. Aside from that Pearl Harbour is just depressing. The film is like a dementor sucking your soul out as this outrageously awful blockbuster flop creaks through every badly written, groan inducing scene with glacial pacing. It takes the movie 1 hour and 20 minutes to get to the attack, which is rendered disrespectfully as a blockbuster showdown and lasts for 40 minutes, before we get the most pointless final hour of all time involving a revenge attack.
All 3 of the leads are awful, while the dialogue is so cringe inducingly bad it can be funny but otherwise listening to the dialogue is a genuinely embarrassing experience which will leave you shaken for days. Michael Bay's direction is as robotic as ever and the film is, in general, a soulless, bloated bomb that deserves to sink without a trace. The final hour could have been erased easily, and with a talented director and a screenwriter who could actually write maybe this might have worked. The music is easily the best thing in the movie, and others may argue the attack sequence is spectacular but I disagree. It's loud, bloated, ugly and acts as it's some big entertaining blockbuster showdown instead of a very tragic day in American history. There are few silver linings or genuine defences for this film. Pearl Harbour is an insult to history, to war movies, to romantic movies, to sunsets, to action set pieces, to its critics, its audience and our intelligence and everyone involved should be ashamed. Especially the writer.
3/10