Seems more like a disservice to those involved

Rating: 3/10 (5 December 2013)

Michael Bay's approach to Pearl Harbor, centering around a tedious, contrived love-triangle is like watching a film about a first date on September 11, 2001. While one thing is going on that seems so trivial, so senseless, and so impulsive, a major historical event is taking place and instead of focusing on the bigger issue, we're stuck on a smaller, more secluded issue that is almost entirely irrelevant.
The last time I witnessed such a big-budget miscalculation had to be when I watched Michael Bay's other atrocity Armageddon, which also victimized Ben Affleck into a senseless funk of action filmmaking. That was just an action film that exemplified the worst qualities of action cinema. Pearl Harbor, on the other hand, exercises the worst qualities of a war film, focusing on a lackluster love story and a brutal war without any agenda that I could find. Just one to milk sentiment from the audience and for a war film to rely on that move is almost cowardice. Do I need to cue Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing?" The film follows Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett), two First Lieutenants for America during World War II. Thrill-seeking buddies, they both become involved in a relationship with Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale), an army nurse. Rafe becomes romantically involved first, exchanging disgustingly cheesy dialog like "something hurts," after a fall injures his nose. "It's probably your nose," Evelyn replies. Rafe hits her with, "I think it's my heart." Groan-worthy dialog really doesn't stop there. When Rafe enrolls in the Eagle Squadron, he is shipped off to the dogfighting portion of combat, with rumors of his plane being shot down and being killed in the process. After this news circulates, while both heartbroken, Danny and Evelyn begin to have a relationship on their own, only to discover that Rafe is indeed alive and well and now angry his best friend has stolen his girl in the process.
This is all troublesome indeed, but in the meantime, there is a giant, merciless war that shows no sign of ending going on right behind you guys, and this petty drama as the main focus of Michael Bay's epic seems a bit senseless, don't you think? I'm all for the humanization of war figures and characters involved in battles, but when there's a film about an enormous militaristic crisis and tragedy and its choice to focus on a love triangle instead of the real struggle at hand seems disingenuous. To use another analogy, it's like interviewing a couple who had a marital argument on a train that derailed about that argument. There's a larger, more interesting, more compelling, more emotionally touching story at hand and this is what you focus on? When we do see the battle at hand, and the action scenes, the production values are very high and the action is watchable. This is for about ten to fifteen minutes before the Michael Bay formula of making every explosion out to be an ear-shattering time bomb and every perilous instance to be a meteoric cacophony of sound that it becomes a muchness. Bay is a guy who loves to make his visuals loud and glossy and to that I give him credit. He should direct music videos for a living. His films, however, always assume this status and become nothing more than a showcase for visuals and a house for stale drama and characters that are developed in a way that feels like an obligation. Granted Bay has never written a film, a fact often misinterpreted, but I'm still trying to discover if screenplays handed to him are chocked full of character development and interesting human drama and, upon being handed back to the writer, are littered with footnotes about when to include an explosion or an action sequence in bold, red ink.
It's odd to note that with a romance involved, a war at hand, and a serious dilemma between characters all occurring in one film, the three hours Pearl Harbor utilizes are dull and boring ones. Affleck and Hartnett are both capable actors, but are given dialog that just bleeds clichés, and accompanied by a script penned by Randall Wallace (the man responsible for writing Braveheart), I can't help but feel that the film's corny depiction of a 1940's romance and the scenes depicting the bombing of Pearl Harbor are a disservice and perhaps offensive to veterans of the war. The film feels like a Hollywood action movie, one that is intended as something to profit off of a tragedy and make entertainment out of it, rather than show the event as it really was. There are literally hundreds of ideas to base a film about Pearl Harbor off of and it's surprising to note that with the abundance of Holocaust films that are all very accomplished and smartly done, we have one widely known film about Pearl Harbor and it's a macro-disappointment.
Starring: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, and Kate Beckinsale. Directed by: Michael Bay.