Watching this you wish the Japanese had won.

Rating: 1/10 (21 April 2002)

Right now this awful film is suffering the final ignimony it truly deserves. Having hit the shelves on DVD it didn't sell & so is being knocked out at the same price but including another major release from the same studio. Even then, such an incentive can't shift "Pearl Harbor" off the shelves. And people scoffed at Kevin Costner & "Water World"!!!!
As far as the story is concerned, well we all know the plot, a staggering torrent threatens to overwhelm us .............no, not the effect of the Japanese air attack on the Naval station at Pearl, I'm talking about the cliches & their effect on the audience. "If anyone has finished with their popcorn can I borrow the bag, I'm going to barf!".
Oh, here we go, right in at the deep end. Childhood pals grow up in some Perfect Little America, Rafe (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Hartnett).Ben Affleck goes off to England to fight the Nazis... he's shot down (predictably) presumed dead (you know he isn't really)& his best friend "comforts" his now emotionally stranded girlfriend (Kate Beckinsale). Yawn, yawn yawn....can't you tell what's going to happen next? Broderrick returns... Zzzz Zzzz Zzzz... the friends fall out & everything that follows is played out to the tune of falling bombs, waving flags & running to battle stations while showing your muscles & good looks....Zzzzz Zzzz Zzzz.
By the time the battle sequences started I was already beyond caring & could hardly keep my eyes open, but the caffeine in the coke I was drinking helped. I perked up a little when the bombs started falling, but this soon faded. The CGI aircraft, bombs, ships & explosions looked cheap & nasty & the little plot line that remained between the characters was continually tiresome, irritating & pathetically predictable.
In the end I couldn't wait to get out & I regret having wasted time & money on such tripe. I don't often find so little positive to say about a movie, but this one takes the prize, beaten only by the indescribably awful "Smokers". The one & only bright spot in all this gloom is John Voight as President Roosevelt, but even this performance is overshadowed by the sheer boredom involved in getting so far & all that follows.
Why Hollywood continues down the same old ludicrously dreadful lines I'll never know. One explanation I have heard is that people there are so afraid of making a decision that when Hollwyood executives get married they take 15 years to decide where to go on honeymoon. No one wants to decide, because if things go wrong they'll get the blame. The result is stagnation & this film reeks of it. Let's face it, if anyone has seen the equally 'by-the-numbers' tripe "Titanic" then you've seen this version of Pearl Harbor. For the Japanese air attack read the iceberg, for Pearl Harbor read the Titanic. It's just another bucket load of the same, old same-old wrapped up in a different cover.
Don't go anywhere near this film, stick to the infinitely superior "Tora Tora Tora", which, despite it's age, is the definitive work on this piece of history.
Hopefully Hollywood will learn from this mistake, but I doubt it.