Don't Believe The Anti-Hype

Rating: Null/10 (26 June 2001)

After reading all the excoriating reviews, I did not have high hopes for "Pearl Harbor", Michael Bay's epic-romantic restaging of the battle that brought America into World War II. I was expecting corn, bathos, high-gloss trash. And I got all of that, except for the trash part. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by how much this picture held my interest and engaged my emotions.
Rafe and Danny (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) are two young hotshot flyboys for the U.S. Marines. At the dawn of the war, they are living the would-be hero's life; while the Brits slug it out with the Nazis, the American army sits happily idle. Rafe is sent overseas to join an elite American-British unit, and while he's facing peril in the air, Danny is becoming maybe too close to Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale), Rafe's WAC lover. The two friends are on a collision course...but just as things are coming to a head, Japanese zeroes buzz into the Hawaiian sky and begin raining death down on Pearl Harbor. All differences must be put aside, personal slights forgotten. It's all about America now, and a huge mission is mounted to show Japan that the U.S. is not about to go gently into that good night.
"Pearl Harbor" is three hours long, and does drag at certain key junctures, but the thing that surprised me was how completely engaging the first hour of the picture was. I was expecting to spend the entire romantic prelude to the battle twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the bombs to drop. Instead, I found myself really caring for these young people and anxious to see how things would turn out for them. I give full credit for this to Affleck, Beckinsale, and Hartnett, who deliver honest, straightforward, unpretentious performances, the kind of serve-the-story acting that makes a film like this work.
Once the attack on the harbor begins, however, this becomes Michael Bay's picture, and he gives us some of the most impressive battle sequences I've seen in a while. Naturally, an air battle is a different beast than the frenzied ground combat of "Saving Private Ryan", just as Bay is a different animal than Spielberg. "Pearl Harbor"'s war scenes are polished, much prettier than "Ryan". Still, the violence hits you like a punch in the gut; even with the PG-13 rating, Bay does not seem to be holding back. The special effects are some of the best I've seen, surpassing "Titanic" in their realism and scope. The sound is appropriately devastating, and John Schwartzman outdoes himself with his grand, sweeping cinematography (marred only by the ugly soft-focus images he uses in the hospital-aftermath sequences).
The film does begin to drag somewhat in its final hour, as a stentorian commander (Alec Baldwin) prepares to lead his men on a retaliatory strike on Japan. I knew the film had some problems when I figured out how it was going to end, learned I was wrong...and thought my ending was better, more dramatically satisfying. Still, the film does send you out on a proud-to-be-an-American note, and for a Memorial Day weekend release, I assume that's what they were going for.
"Pearl Harbor" is by no means a classic. Indeed, it seems that everything I really liked about the film was countered by something that stuck in my craw. Jon Voight does wonderful work as FDR...that is almost sabotaged by silly-putty makeup. The inclusion of the character of Dorrie Miller (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), a black ship's cook who finally got a chance to fight for his country during the attack, was a nice one...but marred by Wallace's blatantly foreshadowing dialogue. It's a tricky film in that regard. You want to love it unconditionally, but the discerning viewer in you keeps holding you back.
Still, unlike many critics, I feel that the good here largely outweighs the bad. "Pearl Harbor" may not be a spot-on retelling of history, but it gives enough of the facts that I believe many kids will be encouraged to seek out books and films that can give them the REAL story. I think that Michael Bay would be quite proud of that. I think it's something to be proud of, too.