Pearl Harbor

Movie Title: Pearl Harbor
Rating: 4
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens

Review:

Boom, bang and uhh, uhh. Oh ya and hip hip horay, go USA! That pretty much sums up the mega-hit Pearl Harbor. Before attacking the film I will first give a quick summary of the film.

Starts off in the Twenties in rural Tennessee with a young Rafe (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Harnett) screwing around, watching out for each other, and pretending to fly. Then it skips ahead to 1940 and the world is at war, but not United States. Danny and Rafe are now in the Army as pilots (the Air Force wasn’t created yet). They soon meet a young and attractive nurse by the name of Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) and Rafe falls for her. She also falls for him. Then he volunteers to go fight in the Eagle Squadron of American pilots flying for the Royal Air Force prior to US involvement. Rafe has Danny look after his girl while he is gone. So while Rafe is in the UK fighting the Germans, Danny’s unit and Evelyn’s nurses are all transferred to Hawaii. Soon they receive word that Rafe was shot down, and he is dead. So now Danny and Evelyn grieve over Rafe. Of course if you saw one of the trailers to this film, and how could you have missed it, then you would have seen Ben Affleck’s character fighting the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, and thus this portion of the film loses it’s effectiveness since you would know that Rafe isn’t dead.

Anyway, the audience is soon let in on the Japanese’s plans to attack Pearl Harbor. Then Rafe returns just before the attack, and attacks his best friend. So now Rafe hates Danny, and Evelyn doesn’t know what to do since she is now pregnant from Danny. Then the Japanese attack and all hell breaks loose. A lot of carnage and destruction, and a lot of heroism as the US forces try to defend themselves.

Well the film then keeps on going showing FDR’s famous speech regarding the attack up through the Doolittle raid on Tokyo.

As I stated a few sentences up, the trailer gives away some of the film. History gives away a lot of the rest. And even then the historical accuracy isn’t that great. For instance it appears that the film makers have FDR complaining about not helping out Churchill and Stalin more towards the end of 1940 (this is judging by the rough timeline that they were presenting) but anyone who has studied much history knows that Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union, wasn’t until June of 1941, and they would also know that the Soviets didn’t start fighting the Japanese until days before V-J Day. Then as to the love story, it just didn’t work that well. In say Titanic, the audience wanted Jack to get the girl since the rich boy was an ass. In this film both Rafe and Danny are the heroes, so you don’t really want to root for one over the other. Basically Pearl Harbor is a big rah rah rah film for the United States as they fight those treacherous Japanese.

The film was written by Randall Wallace and the directing was done by Michael Bay. Others in the cast include Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight, Alec Baldwin, William Lee Scott, Ewen Bremner, Greg Zola, Catherine Kellner, Jennifer Garner, and a bunch of others.

I found the acting adequate, the special effects spectacular, the story a bit unbelievable (outside of the historical portions), and overall not that great. Not horrible by any means, but definitely not great. For the rating I give it four couches out of ten and recommend renting Tora! Tora! Tora! For a better Pearl Harbor film or go see Shrek if you want to visit a theater near you. Later.