What exactly was the point of this film?

Rating: 4/10 (1 May 2010)

Put extremely attractive young men and women into the fashions of 1941 but with the moral attitudes of the 21st century, add special effects, completely throw out any basis in actual fact in order to get an emotional reaction from the audience (here the film succeeds for all the wrong reasons), add a few rousing speeches, and you have Pearl Harbor. The only good thing about this film are the special effects, and even then I prefer the more primitively done Tora,Tora,Tora from thirty years before because it actually tells the truth about what led up to the raid in painstaking detail, actually taking the time to show what is going on with both the Japanese and the Americans and the mistakes and misjudgments made on both sides. If you want steamy love scenes and nicely done explosions and graphics, watch this film. If you want to be entertained while learning something about history watch Tora, Tora, Tora. You won't regret it.
Just one word about the commentary track if you get the DVD. The best thing about DVDs of films directed by Michael Bay are the commentary tracks. Hearing this track, I could easily see where some of the bad dialogue came from. The problem is that Michael Bay interviewed many Pearl Harbor veterans, and he used the expressions they used in the movie. There's 125 different personalities crammed into a few characters that are spewing the bad dialogue. I'm guessing Mr. Bay took all the expressions these people said and had two or three characters say everything. So all the clichéd expressions the veterans used during their lives are shoved into 3 hours. That's my take anyway. Mr. Bay does admit that one thing he would change if he could would be the earnest dialogue because the younger people seem to think it's corny.
The DVD is very cheap to purchase at this point, and is worth it for the commentary track alone.