I want my five fifty and three hours of my life back!

Rating: 1/10 (9 September 2001)

Here it is, folks. A one hundred and fifty million dollar budget, an A-list cast, promise of some intense action scenes, supposedly going to be a great summer film, and in the end, turns out to be just another Michael Bay film: loud, stupid, boring, excessive hero and sunset shots, and a complete waste of audience time, crew's efforts, and money that could have been used to finance thirty "Memento"'s.
The redundant storyline (of which even writer Randal Wallace wants erased from his resume) revolves around a love triangle with the Pearl Harbor bombing at the center, which seemed to have been inspired when Bay noticed "Saving Private Ryan" eclipsed the box office of his "Armageddon" domestically and decided to do the same movie, as well as duplicating his lack-luster love story that centered in "Armageddon".
Now in order for romances to work, the audience must believe the characters have a reason to either be together or in love. Neither surface. The result is a waste of Kate Beckinsdale, who is reduced to staring blankly in every scene and seemingly to throw herself at everything that has a penis, be it Affleck, Hartnett, or that guy in the clinic. In fact, I even feel dirty as to how she stared at me from the screen.
As for the bombing sequence itself, it fails to either excite or inform. The CG planes are completely fake looking and the ships they bomb aren't even supposed to be around until the eightes. At least Titanic spent a large amount of time trying to detail the period accurately. Even my friend from the Navy, described this film as being "boring."
One thing "Saving Private Ryan" did well was depict violence in all it's shocking realism, and never trying to leave the audience with a happy feeling by the end. In "Pearl Harbor", the end result is merely a three hour film (of which I regret not using trying to mentally block out the fact I ever heard of this lousy film) that doesn't even show as much information (or any at all for that matter) or, let alone, do anything to actually credit the memory of the unfortunate lives lost at Pearl Harbor.