The death of storytelling

Rating: Null/10 (19 June 2001)

What bothers me even more than the historical inaccuracies is the inability to tell a coherent story. The abundance of quick cuts, constant overwhelming music, overemoting actors, and blatant symbolism is becoming fairly common these days. Unfortunately, all this gets in the way of following what's going on. There's a lot of money on effects (such as the Arizona blowing up), but no time given to appreciate them.
All this layering on seems to be an attempt to inject "excitement" as an alternative to the more difficult but more effective method of a coherent, suspenseful plot. You might contrast the Pearl Harbor attack with the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg effectively recreates the chaos of battle, yet you're able to understand the movement of the characters and the obstacles they must face. By NOT USING MUSIC to artificially heighten emotions, he created a much more powerful experience.
I don't consider this movie to be about Pearl Harbor in any historical sense; it's a video game with P40s as X-wings, jammed in with force-fed emotionalism.