A great injustice to history

Rating: Null/10 (23 February 2002)

When I saw the trailer for this movie, it made me cry. Twice. I never cried over a trailer in my life before. It was so beautifully constructed and poetic, capturing both the terrible and heroic essence together, complimented by a sweeping musical suite by Hans Zimmer. Wow.
Then I saw the actual film. I couldn't even begin to express my disappointment then, but I will give it a try now. First, let's start with the concept of turning this monumental tragedy in American history into a slam-bang action spectacular. Already, this is the worst way to approach this subject matter. It trivializes this event and what it meant for those who died and still suffer to this day because of it, and no sense of historic consequences are even touched upon when it's all said and done. After all, this event, as tragic as it was, led the United States to become a Global Superpower. That alone deserves a little more screen time than just a simple throw-away line of voice-over narration at the film's conclusion, and it wasn't even clear then that this is what resulted.
The movie's user-friendly premise of a love triangle between Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale falls flat on its face because it doesn't have any context within the attack on Pearl Harbor itself. It simply just exists to fill in between bites of popcorn. Unlike here, the love story concept worked in a historical setting like "Titanic" because there were clear story ramifications between the sinking of the ship and the future of the love affair. That's why we as the audience hung in there and were worried how it was all going to turn out. In "Pearl Harbor", the Japanese attack has no effect whatsoever on the love triangle. Yes, the characters take part in it, but they are not impacted by it, which is what successful movies do to involve their audiences. It's called "dramatic tension", and is the basis of all storytelling. Only after the attack is long gone does the relationship story come back into play. Well, at this point, so what? It merely helps us to alleviate the painful memory that only about two-and-a-half thousand sailors just died. But hey, who's gonna get the girl? That's what this movie called "Pearl Harbor" is really about, isn't it? Forget this war stuff, I've got my date here with me and I seem to remember paying to see three hours in the love lives of these three models... I mean characters. Oh, and what about the President Roosevelt caricature... I mean character? He looked like a puppet, a cardboard cut-out of one of our greatest presidents. Sadly, this version of FDR came off as having no real personality, he just kept spouting cliched lines of wooden patriotic rhetoric, and seemed like he kept saying "Our boys" every other line. Where's the human being in this man?
And what about the Japanese in this movie? Where are they? Besides all being in the Navy on the attacking planes and ships, I didn't catch many Japanese people in Hawaii at all. Why the hell not? Were the filmmakers afraid that it wasn't politically correct to show them there? What a disservice to all those Japanese-Americans who were harrassed, violated and thrown into internment camps when the war broke out. Now, I bet there are some great stories to be told there. But certainly not here.
Forget this movie. Watch it only to understand the err of its ways. But if you want to see a real war movie with captivating plotlines, historical context, and involving, well-written characters, check out "Glory" and "Saving Private Ryan." Now those are movies that can make us feel proud, and also walk away certain that war is really not all that youth-oriented and cool.