Pearl Harbor [2001]

Historical snippets are interleaved, with Mako and Jon Voigt stiff under the prosthetics asAdmiral Yamamoto and Franklin Roosevelt, and a lot of detail is given about things like the wooden rudders on the new Japanese torpedoes, the chaos in the understaffed hospital as the heroine is forced to make lipstick triage marks on wounded men's foreheads and the terrible effects of strafing. A surprisingly bright little performance from Dan Aykroyd (a sole reminder of 1941) as an intelligence analyst is balanced by an insufferably smug one from Cuba Gooding Jr as a token black supporting hero. It's the first film of the George W Bush era: aggressive and dumb as a rock, utterly uninterested in period--no one in this WWII-era army smokes, swears or uses racial abuse (Gooding's boxing opponent sneers at him because he's a cook)--and awkwardly straddles a dignified treatment of the Japanese and America's actual spasm of hatred after the attack (one soldier refuses to be treated by a Japanese doctor, but that's it). When Pearl Harbour is bombed, we see endangered dogs, drowning men and dead women, but when Tokyo gets blasted in payback only buildings are destroyed and in long-shot. Michael Bay (Armageddon) remains a jittery director, a great second-unit man who can't deal with people or stories. It borrows from Titanic and Saving Private Ryan, but tidies the war of the latter up so it can still haul in a broad audience and therefore misses the real tragic sense of the former.--Kim Newman

On the DVD: Considering there are two discs in the special edition of this special effects homage, the second DVD is woefully short of extras. There is a 45-minute featurette on the highs and lows of bringing Michael Bay's magnum opus to the screen which, along with the usual interviews with cast and crew, features the more compelling eyewitness testimony bringing the events of December 7, 1941 to life. The irony of the second disc focussing on the research and quest for historical accuracy is a little difficult to swallow, considering that the film is little more than a paper thin, overly romanticised muddle of history and fantasy, but for those wanting to experience the real events on that fateful day rather than the Hollywood version, this is an excellent antidote. The movie has been THX digitally mastered for superior sound and picture quality improving those big-bang special effects and is presented in anamorphic widescreen with 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Unlike the Region 1 release, there's no DTS track but the 5.1 Dolby Digital sound is more than up to the challenge of the effects laden assault, with different elements of the Japanese attack rumbling between the speakers and making you feel you're in the thick of things. -- Kristen Bowditch

Essentially Pearl Harbor is one of those "give some idiot $100m and order him to produce a film which will cover those costs fourfold" type Hollywood blockbusters. In amongst the special effects (the only redeeming feature of this film) is the "script-by-numbers" love story, revolving around a couple of typical American Joes and some bint of a woman. The acting is lamentable; one can only speculate as to how anyone could allow this to be released on an unsuspecting public.

This is all pretty normal for Tinseltown though. What riles me is how unashamedly jingoistic this film is. Yes, the bombing of Pearl Harbor was a tragic event, but then so were the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You can bet your life Hollywood'll never make a film about them.
Also, as well as being a devastating blow to the US Navy, Pearl Harbor was deeply embarrassing for America. The completely unnecessary scenes where Tokyo is "revenged bombed" are a none-too-subtle way of saying "Yes, ya hurt us, but we're so great we're gonna open uppa can of whoopass on ya, yeehaw, the USA is so great and we sure paid those Japs back!" It's pathetic. The film title is "Pearl Harbor", not "Pearl Harbor and How We Got Them Back".

The Amazon reviewer did mention this, but there was an awkwardness when dealing with the Japanese. It's no-holds-barred when the English, or the French, or the Russians are concerned, but in the age of political correctness, and with America and Japan such huge economic allies these days it would be distasteful to portray them as, say, the British are portrayed in The Patriot (another astoundingly poor film). The truth was, however, that the Japanese were demonised terribly in America during World War Two. Since there was a large number of German heritage migrants in the country propaganda was more focused on "The Jap". Failing to address this in the movie is yet another example of Hollywood's distorted version of the truth.

Please, if you're even just considering seeing this movie, for the special effects, or the action: leave well alone. Get Rambo 3 out of the video store instead: there are explosions aplenty and at least you can laugh at the acute irony of the ending.


Fantastic!   October 31, 2001
18 out of 27 found this review helpful

The critics are wrong about this one! If you like Jerry Bruckhiemer films such as Top Gun, Crimson Tide, The Rock, Armageddon, Bad Boys, Enemy of the State etc then you will love Pearl Harbour. The Film is fantastic! Outstanding special effects, great story line, and a very moving emotional soundtrack! A must for all Jerry Bruckhiemer fans!


Cynicism disguised as a War Film.   February 8, 2003
Jason Parkes (Worcester, UK)
15 out of 33 found this review helpful

Pearl Harbor (sic) is everything the critics said it was. And worse. A dim amalgamation not of beauty & horror, but of Saving Private Ryan & Titanic. This film has more in common with The Phantom Menace than From Here to Eternity- a cacophony of CGI & reconstructed atrocities. If you like seeing people blown up, this is your film- personally I find it rather odd that people get off on people being cut to shreds by laser-like bullets. The action part of this film is exactly like Private Ryan- nice to see that the falling Japanese bombs are used as punchlines several times, e.g "It's a Dud!"- BOOM!

The period detail is hyperreal, the love triangle the biggest cliche ever- I guessed how this would end before I saw the film (& there's that Iceman-Maverick style repressed homosexuality between pretty boy Hartnett & balding Affleck). The characters are paper-thin cliches, Beckinsale the homely nurse- Sizemore the shouting Patton type (he even shoots at a plane with a gun- as George C Scott did in Patton)- the tertiary characters including Ewan Bremner. Cuba Gooding Jr's career vanishes towards Snow Day, from the Oscar Winning Jerry Maguire. Love the fact the captain knows who he is & that the systematic racism alluded to in such establishment sources as Hugh Brogan's Penguin History of the USA is not present. The Japs get a minor-plotline, Tora! Tora! Tora! style- though we don't get to know ANY of them as people & their appearance is more out of wish to have success in the Japanese demograph than to approach history with anything like balance (witness the obscene dehumanization of the Somalians in Black Hawk Down).

Jon Voight acts like he's in an Oliver Stone film, pity that. There is some horrible schmaltz- kids dressed as angels as the Japs come into bomb & scampering dogs. Sailors say that they're going to drown as their ship becomes immersed in water & Gooding Jr reenacts Under Siege- becoming the Chef who gets into action, shooting down some too fast CGI planes in a style that reminded me of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: A New Hope. There's even a bit of the film shot from stock meant to resemble the period- what exactly is this meant to signify? Watch for the amusing scene that follows, just like Anakin in Phantom Menace at the end.

The reprisals at the end are comedy of the finest order- it would be hilarious if this were a comedy. As the history books will tell you, many more Japanese died in WWII than Americans- specifically in air-raids such as the blanket bombing of Tokyo & the atom decimation of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Here you get the idea they are bombing non-humans, so that's all right...

Pearl Harbor translates establishment history (where are the conspiracy theories about this event?) into entertainment; the problem is, it ain't that entertaining. This is a celluloid atrocity, manipulative propaganda of the dimmest variety. The same limited writer also did the same style script for the idiotic We Were Soldiers- this strain of ideology is archaic, pre-WWII, pre-Catch 22, pre-MASH....


Good as a love story, bad as a war film.   November 12, 2001
MR M LEE
14 out of 26 found this review helpful

Lets be honest, this film lacks anything at all to make it in any way five stars. Yes, its sad and even brought a tear to my eye...but it is way too long. In the cinema I found myself bored towards the end and just felt like shouting 'Just die Josh, die and get it over with.' The acting in it is quite impressive, though, with good performances from not only Affleck and Hartnett but from many of the smaller cameos (like Dan Akroyd). However, the story lacks the intimicacy of Titanic (a far superior film on so many levels), despite an attempt to integrate the audience into the lives of the two pals we don't really care that much for them.

While it succeeds well as a love story... it fails completely to tell the story of Pearl Harbor. It bends truth and tells it own version of the American viewpoint without any attempt to delve into the reality. It completely ignores the Japanese side of the coin (mentioning the use of wooden blades on torpedoes does not constitute the Japanese story).

To complement its failure as a war movie, it uses special effects to trivialise suffering (did we really need to see the painting sailors getting blown to bits by the torpedo) all in the name of big bucks extravaganza. The special effects are overplayed to the extreme just because it looks pretty (especially that 'Chicken Run' bit where the Jap planes fly into each other, ludicrous).

Having said that, I will buy it. What can I say, I'm a bit of a hippocrite.