Big, blundering brute of a film that flashes around as uncontrollably as an unmanned hosepipe on full power.

Rating: 4/10 (13 September 2009)

Isn't it annoying when the boundaries between the war genre and the action genre are blurred to the point that the piece eventually just resembles out-and-out exploitation? Pearl Harbor, or 'Pearl Harbour' to the Brits or further still 'Pearl Harbore' to anyone with any common sense - regardless of nationality, is a film that blurs these boundaries to the point of blindness. It ploughs through the rule book like a freight train slamming through a blockade made out of matchsticks. Pearl Harbor sees war and human misery as an excuse to get across the shock and awe of experiencing bombs dropping around you; gunshots going off mere feet away from you and death and destruction everywhere you turn; all in glorious, soft focus and drenched out cinematography. War films should primarily be war films that sometimes, or might not at all, contain a little bit of action – Pearl Harbor is an action film that sometimes, or might not even at all, contain a little bit of war.
Pearl Harbor etches out just about everything the audience it is aimed at would want out of a film: romance; action; gunfights; comedy; retribution; attractive leads, all in a runtime of about two and a half plus hours; all under the facade of historical non-fiction and real life tragedy. In historical terms, you won't learn anything from Pearl Harbor that you wouldn't be able to pick up off the back of a themed, kiddie orientated cereal box: "This semester: Second World War Trivia!" The latter third of Pearl Harbor reminded me of an old; 1945 made; Spanish produced and propagandist driven piece entitled 'The Last Ones of the Philippines', as this 99 minute piece of drivel about brave, Spanish soldiers defiantly holding up against all the odds in a symbolist-driven location (that being the local church) as various acts of heroism and 'upstanding-ness' are played out.
The notion being that war works; war can be a good thing if it means being able to get across what makes a nation, or a nation's attitudes and/or beliefs, 'great'. The catholic driven iconography of the church in said example echoes one such character's eventual demise much later on in Pearl Harbor as we realise he is killed trying to protect a friend whilst tied to a cross – a fitting iconographic intervention. Whereas the ideology of the poor, brave leads refusing to go down without a fight as they strike back with the Dolittle raids/hold up in the said location suggests a sense of victory/accomplishment even though the overall times for the nation are that of dark ones.
I've read about it before, and I'm in agreement on the point that Bay doesn't want to end his film with the Pearl Harbor attack because it's a downer, when Bay's film-making ideology is all about anything but. Generic, Hollywood action films (Pearl Harbor is an action film, remember?), it seems, are supposed to have happy endings. Ending with the darkest hour in America's history (at least up to that point in 2001) is seen as not the way to go. But with hindsight, does United 93 go on for another hour after it ends; further documenting what America did in response to the events explored in that film? Of course not; it's an honourable and harrowing depiction of something that happened, not a glamorous; 'feel good'; action movie designed to excite.
The film will eventually see Americans Rafe McCawley (Affleck) and Danny Walker (Hartnett) become pilots, but initially they mix and mingle with one another as young kids. They play on Danny's father's farm in a disused crop-duster, pretending to fly and shoot down enemy planes; essentially capturing Bay's overall attitudes to the war genre, one of which says it is just one big game in which gun fire and dogfights play a large part in 'having fun'. One day, they accidentally take up a real crop duster – much to father's displeasure, and he berates them in what is one, brief fleeting moment of realisation of how horrid war is; when he recounts what it was like in the trenches of World War One.
From here, they follow up on their love of flying by becoming United States Army Air Corps First Lieutenants, all the time under the watchful eye of James Doolittle (Baldwin). This is in between getting involved with some of the nurses after they're all posted to Pearl Harbor, the nurses; of whom represent some of the loosest, dumbest, most flirtatious, most pouting ever seen on film. They are nothing but mere prizes, what with their bright red lipstick and on-screen vibrancy; they exist only to be 'won' by the male pilots and navy personnel - the one that causes the most trouble is Evelyn Johnson (Beckinsale). Along for the ride is Red Winkle (Bremner); an annoying, stammering character whose deformity is nothing but the butt of most jokes; one of which occurs seconds before the Japanese actually attack Pearl Harbor as he blurts "The Japs are here(!)" in what is a monumentally mistimed gag on Bay's behalf.
Then there is the attack itself; while technically brilliant, displaying a good awareness of where the planes and boats are in relation to one another, it exists to titillate; to excite: it should be harrowing, but Bay turns it into the film's money shot – he turns it into the most exciting thing in the film when it ought to be saddest, with the item that is the saddest something else completely un-related to the Pearl Harbor attack. "I think World War Two just started(!)" spouts some idiot character as it all plays out. The film is a monumental misfire; a politically-driven load of clap-trap, with an ideology that reads something like: 'You do not mess with America!', one that sees the Japanese given five seconds of backlog and President Roosevelt, circa 1941, actually stand up and walk. Too bad there was no last stand in a church.