God Help Us If There's Ever A Director's Cut

Rating: 4/10 (29 May 2001)

"Pearl Harbor" is an overlong, directionless wanna-be epic that ultimately strikes out on all counts. It could have been a good war movie, or a decent romance, but putting the two together with ham-handed dialogue that could have been written by a tenth grade English class simply makes this a movie that shines in its mediocrity.
The battle sequence itself is technically impressive. From the moment the Japanese take off from their aircraft carriers, moviegoers are treated with 45 minutes of explosions, mayhem and death. Of course, "Pearl Harbor" dehumanizes the battle itself quite spectacularly; you're left feeling like you've just been inside a video game that lacks the humanity that made the battle sequences in "Saving Private Ryan" so powerful. War isn't hell so much in "Pearl Harbor" as it is big and loud. And fun--perhaps too much fun.
Unfortunately, to get there, you have to sit through the interminable, plodding backstory. It is simply amazing how screenwriter Randall Wallace and director Michael Bay are able to expand twenty minutes of soap opera rubbish into an hour and a half. There are enough predictable plot twists, campy dialogue, and shameless sappiness to cut out the superfluous "war" parts and make this into a crappy romance flick.
The acting isn't much better. Ben Affleck can be so much better than this, but he seems not to make much of an action hero (this doesn't bode well for the next Tom Clancy movie). His delivery is wooden, his character unconvincing, and his performance below-average. Josh Hartnett, by contrast, does a respectable job, considering the material he's been given to work with. Kate Beckinsale does a good job of playing her character as cheesily as it's written. Unfortunately, she squanders the few chances she gets to try and break out a little.
The supporting cast doesn't do much to help things along, either. In particular, Cuba Gooding, Jr. presents a bit of a conundrum. One can't help but feel that his character is inserted in the film as a throwaway to modern politically-correct sentiments (as indicated by the use of "cook" as an epithet). His character, Dorie Miller, was one of the few truly outstanding heroes to come out of the battle, and deserved far more screen time--and story--than he got. The rest, especially Alec Baldwin and Dan Aykroyd, are characters that do little or nothing to help the central love story and, as a result, are relegated to the background.
In the end, you'll leave "Pearl Harbor" feeling rather ambivalent. Part of you will have thrilled to the excitement of the second half of the movie. The rest of you will wonder why you had to be bored to tears in order to get there.