Review of Pearl Harbor (2001) by Paul S — 15 May 2014

"If the call of duty means seeing a hundred men in their underwear everyday, we are here to serve.".

You've heard the general consensus about Michael Bay, that's he's viewed as one of the worst filmmakers ever. While I can't really say who the worse moviemaker of all-time is, I can say that I don't really enjoy Bay's films too well, particularly Transformers. And Pearl Harbor is not that grand of a movie. What could have been a spectacular war movie ended up being a bland, forgettable, and overall disappointing piece of cinema.

Why was Pearl Harbor disappointing, you ask? Well for starters, Bay had a weird idea to create what he called "the Titanic of war movies". And while I loved Titanic, the idea of putting a love story in the backdrop of one of the most tragic events in American history was not a smart idea. Which means for the first hour or so of the movie, we are tortured to an extremely forgettable and very boring love story. Ben Affleck plays an air pilot who leaves America and his nurse lover Kate Beckinsale to fight in WWII (as America hasn't entered the war yet). While he's gone, she falls for Affleck's friend Josh Harnett in the naval base of Pearl Harbor. So when Affleck returns to the picture after presumed dead, things go crazy. And I was completely bored by what was unfolding on screen. The dialogue was absolutely atrocious ("God your so beautiful that it hurts.", "It's your nose! ", "No I think its my heart...", was George Lucas in production here?), the acting was poor, especially Affleck, who I think deserved a Razzie for his performance (and makes me skeptical of his upcoming role as Batman), and it continues Bay's streak of picking the worst actors in his films in favor over visuals. I'm OK with using fictitious characters in a film based on historic events, particularly in war pictures, as it worked for me in other films like Battle of the Bulge, but they at least need to be interesting, not one-dimensional.

And speaking of visuals, they're the only reason why I decided to watch the whole film through. Unlike Transformers, which was an overblown disaster, the recreation of the Pearl Harbor attack was absolutely jaw-dropping. For the hour the bombs dropped, I absolutely forgot the atrocity of the love story and acting and felt like I was witnessing an American tragedy. I didn't shed any tears, but the scene was spectacular to witness. To bad that after the attack was over the film continued in his disappointing mess.

While the acting was poor by the three main stars, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, and especially Ben Affleck (one of the worst acting performances I've ever seen in my life, I might add), the supporting performances were decent, such as Cuba Gooding Jr. as a real-life African-American cook who became the first black man to receive a medal for his bravery in the attack, Alec Baldwin as pilot Jimmy Doolittle, who leads the retaliation attack against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, and Jon Voight as FDR. The recreation of FDR's "a day that will live in infamy" speech almost made me weep. But what made me angry about this is that Bay favored terrible lead actors over the greatness of real, talented stars.

As for Hans Zimmer's score, it was average at best. He tries to do what James Horner succeeded in Titanic by creating epic love themes, but fails miserably. The war themes were enjoyable at best in how emotionally intense the Pearl Harbor attack was, but at the end of the day, there are far better scores that Zimmer has done.

From what I've seen from Michael Bay, Pearl Harbor is his best film, better than the two awful Transformers films I watched, but that doesn't mean Pearl Harbor is a cinematic masterpiece. While supporting actors like Jon Voight and Cuba Gooding Jr. give standout performances and the Pearl Harbor attack scene is spectacular, the Titanic-styled love story, some of the most atrocious dialogue I've ever heard in my life, and one-dimensional fictitious characters hurt what could have made Pearl Harbor one of the best films of the 2000's decade into one of the most disappointing. Even more disappointing to me is that Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the best producers of all-time. was involved in this Titanic rip-off. Best thing to do is heavily avoid the film if not done so already (not counting the attack scene) and watch Titanic instead.

"We're building refrigerators, while our enemies build bombs.".