Review of Pearl Harbor (2001) by Chris G — 18 Dec 2013

Pearl Harbor is a movie that I just can't. The story is so derivative of what happened the day of December 7th, 1941 that it makes the whole thing, quite frankly, hard to watch. It's clear that they were going with the Titanic kind if story, with a few main characters in the middle of the larger story of Pearl Harbor. And while the script for Titanic was certainly cliche, it at least had good acting. The three leads in Pearl Harbor were just terrible, and yes, that includes Ben Affleck. The only good things about the movie was seeing Alec Baldwin and Cuba Gooding Junior, I thought they were OK. I didn't care for the love story, I didn't buy any of it, and I felt that everything that worked for Titanic just didn't work for Pearl Harbor. As someone who was born on December 7, I have a special kind of dislike for this boring, overly-dramatic bust of a film.

However, I will complement the special effects. They were spectacular and the main climactic moment (the attack on Pearl Harbor) was phenomenally shot. 1 star for the that.