'Pearl Har-bore' (Pearl Harbor (DVD))

Member Name: ben_83

Product:	Pearl Harbor (DVD)
Date:	05/06/01 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some of the lines are so awful it's funny, the special effects look nice

Disadvantages: It's too long, everything is so predictable, it has a terribly irresponsible pro-America agenda, the romance is nauseating, it's shot poorly, the characters are all the same, Alec Baldwin, Alec Baldwin, ALEC BALDWIN!

'Titanic', 'Pearl Harbor''s summer blockbuster equivalent of a few years ago, was a poorly-scripted, overlong, effects-led piece of dross where a dramatic real-life event was the backdrop for an insipid love story. Coming out of the cinema after seeing 'Pearl Harbor', I was hit with a strange sense of déjà vu.

Rafe (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Hartnett) have been best friends ever since they were children. Flying was their passion and they spent many an evening wholesomely pretending to be first world war pilots. Unlike most children, however, they didn't grow out of these juvenile fantasies and became real military pilots just in time for the second world war to start in Europe. In readiness for America joining in, Rafe and Danny are sent to Pearl Harbour in Hawaii where Rafe meets a nurse called Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) with whom he promptly falls in love. Despite this, he is unhappy with the lack of combat in America and volunteers to go to England to help the RAF fight the Luftwaffe leaving Danny and Evelyn in America. Inevitably, disaster strikes and Rafe is shot down over the English Channel. Assuming he is dead, Danny and Evelyn try to cope by sticking together but end up getting closer than they bargained for only to regret it when a familiar face turns up out of the blue...

I've seen some bad films in my time but there is one thing about 'Pearl Harbor' that makes it worse than most - its length (it weighs in at over three hours). To illustrate this, let me compare it to 'The Hole', a pretty bad film I saw quite recently. In terms of quality of script, acting and direction, there's not much to choose between them (they're both pretty awful) but 'Pearl Harbour' is a far worse movie than 'The Hole' simply because there's more of the badness. This is made even worse when you realise that an hour of the film is unnessecery. It feels although the first third is just
there to give the film 'epic' status since nothing of interest happens in this time.

What makes the length of the film worse is that everything is so predictable. As soon as Rafe's plane crashes into the sea it's obvious that he isn't dead. Would a film aimed at an audience that places so much importance on the looks of the leading man really kill a character played by Ben Affleck before it reaches a third of the way through? Not likely. Then there are the combat scenes reminiscent of a 1940s 'Top Gun' where our heroes whilst a-whoopin' and a-hollerin' in that inimitable American way gallantly shoot down all their silent (and therefore evil, apparently) enemies without getting hit once. When Rafe and Danny are the only two left in the sky the Japanese commander decides for no plausible reason to cancel the next wave. When asked why he was not sending more planes he might as well have said 'Ben Affleck can't die now!'

The romantic side of the story is pretty dire too. As well as being so dreadfully predictable (there's that word again) it's sentimental to the point of nausea. If you have a weak stomach and you don't fit the teenage girl demographic stay away from 'Pearl Harbor'.

The direction is a mixed bag at best. Of course, the special effects are stunning but this is no longer a selling point for a film as it seems that every release nowadays has some kind of special effects and, thanks to the technology becoming cheaper, they are always very pretty. As well as looking realistic though, the action scenes are shot well with some exiting, edge-of-the-seat flying sequences. However, Michael Bay spoils this good work with the awfully corny opening and closing scenes, the stereotyping of Britain as some dingy little hell hole (as encapsulated by the plane assigned to Rafe - bullet holes down the side and a big, bloody smash in the canopy) and Japan as a country stuck in a f
eudal timewarp. The scenes in the hospital shot with an unnecessarily jerky camera show poor direction too.

On the plus side, the script does entertain with some of the lines it throws up. Unfortunately for the screen writers, this is unintentional. After Rafe has 'died', one of the nurses comments on Evelyn's melancholy state by saying something to the effect of 'could she *be* any more in love?' in that awfully generic American sitcom style pioneered by Matthew Perry. I wasn't aware that 'Friends' was on television in the war years. If it was, there's more of a delay in getting American programmes on British television than I thought. Another example that is even funnier is the choicest pick of the awful Alec Baldwin's (who has a minor role as Rafe and Danny's commander) many impossibly macho lines. He says in a deep, gruff voice in his trademark hammed-up style 'look at the man standing next to you. After this mission there's a good chance he'll be dead.' And they say Hollywood doesn't make good comedies any more.

As well as this, the word 'characterisation' seems to be one the production team have forgotten. In other words, there is no distinction between the different characters. For example, setting aside cosmetic differences (such as a 'hilarious' stammer or a weight problem which is supposed to indicate 'the funny one') all the pilots are brave jocks and all the nurses are ditsy wannabe homemakers. This needn't have been, however, if the makers had followed up on their suggestion that Rafe may be dyslexic. Still, that's typical of this film: the one intruiging aspect of it is abandoned almost as soon as it is adopted.

As in 'Titanic', the actors taking the leads in 'Pearl Harbor' (Affleck and Beckinsale) are fairly respected and do a reasonably good job with what is an absolutely awful script. Hartnett is slightly wooden,
has an annoying voice and doesn't seem to ever open his eyes fully but he's just about bearable. Baldwin, however, is just plain terrible. I know I mentioned him earlier in this opinion but he's such a bad actor he deserves to be chastised more than once. That incredibly solemn, macho way he has of talking where he hardly moves his lips is so annoying that you feel like climbing into the cinema screen and giving him a hard slap across his now chubby, stubbly face.

In amongst all the dross, however, I do remember one vaguely touching moment. At the very end one of the men dies and it's all quite emotional. Quite honestly though, you will have lost all interest a long time before that comes and by the middle of the film it was obvious that it was coming. This alone is certainly not worth an extra star or, for that matter, £5 of your hard-earned cash.

On a more serious note, 'Pearl Harbor''s portrayal of war is incredibly irresponsible. After the Japanese raid there are scenes of chaos in the military hospital with people bleeding to death and charred bodies littering the ground. Apparently, though, American deaths are the only tragic ones. When Rafe and Danny are shooting down Japanese fighters and dropping bombs on Tokyo there is only jubilation and absolutely no consideration for the disastrous consequences. Also, in a slightly sinister move, the makers seem to want us to believe that a relatively small, symbolic bombing raid was America's only answer to the Pearl Harbor incident. It seems they are trying to deny that America's real reply (the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) was actually far more devastating, and some might say evil, than the attack it was meant as revenge for. This is absolutely inexcusable.

A measure of 'Pearl Harbor''s awfulness is that I wasn't annoyed by a group of women behind me in the cinema talking all the way through the film. You see, I had ab
solutely no interest in what was happening on the screen as early as half an hour in. In fact, it was more interesting (and factually accurate for that matter) listening to them making jibes at the movie than watching the thing. To conclude, this is quite honestly one of the worst films I've ever seen. Sitting alone doing nothing for three hours is a more entertaining alternative.

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