Great war story, poor love story

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 2002)

The Pearl Harbor attack scenes were believable. A friend of the family who was a survivor on the West Virginia thought the depiction was accurate. (Sadly, he passed away less than a month after attending the recent 60th anniversary reunion.) At the same time, it was not graphic enough to upset sensitive viewers.
I believed the portrayal of Evelyn Johnson, the nurse. She was clearly a competent, mature person, especially in comparison to her fellow nurses. Evelyn was equally hard to believe in her portrayal as a girlfriend. Both Rafe and Danny were "out of her league," and she would not have either fallen in love with them or allowed herself to get pregnant. The premarital sex appeared to be out of her character and more importantly out of step with the times.
It was hard to believe that Rafe and Danny would be alive after their plane crashes. The fate of both Rafe and Danny was obvious long before the conclusion.
Despite the criticism about the botched love story, it was a movie that I enjoyed very much. And enjoyment and the ability to get absorbed into it is the bottom line. Score it an 8 out of 10.