It's 3 hours long. This is a crime, and the director should be made to pay. Here's the entire story of Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor is bombed. It's almost as if the attack on Pearl Harbor gets in the way of the nice little war-time love story.
Every character arc is put on hold until the dust settles.
Now, I must reiterate- when they blow up the ships, it is very cool. The ships blow up real well. But I couldn't help thinking that the entire movie belittled the actual experience by having two renegade Hollywood creations manage to single handedly take down a bunch of Japanese fighters during the attack. They're the stars of the movie, so even though America is getting pounded into the Stone Age, our boys are still total studs. It's the Rambo syndrome, where one Hollywood character proves to be more efficient than the entirety of the American armed forces.