3 hours later I was a happy chappy (Pearl Harbor (DVD))

Member Name: GR-Design

Product:	Pearl Harbor (DVD)
Date:	27/04/02 (28 review reads)
Rating:

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I had an afternoon of doing nothing and Pearl Harbor has been sitting on my shelves for a while now without me watching it, so I gave it a go. I’m very glad I did too, although I did have to stop the video half way through to go and have a fag! It’s a bit long!

Pearl Harbor had a lot of hype surrounding it when it hit the cinema. It hit the cinema around the same time as Bridget Jones Diary, which seemed to come out on top as the best movie around that time, however, that may have been due to Pearl Harbor being so long, and not so many people wanting to place their buttocks on a seat in the cinema for 3 and a half hours, not that I blame them really! I think personally that it was judged wrongly though. Watching the film, those 3 hours don’t go by that slowly at all, and although like The Green Mile, they could have cut the film a bit shorter, the film uses all of the material to it’s advantage. What was it with the mouse in The Green Mile anyway!? I missed it at the cinema, and yes, I actually went to see Bridget Jones instead, but now I do wish I had caught this film in the cinema, as it would have only done it more justice.

This film reminded me a lot of Armageddon. Don’t ask me why, maybe it was just Ben Affleck, but it followed the same sort of concept and right from the start, I kinda knew what was going to happen, even if I didn’t know how it was going to happen, it just had that feeling about it, and indeed, I was proved right. However, just because you think you know how it’s going to end, it doesn’t mean you can’t watch it right the way through!

In the Graham movie review tradition, heres a few figures and stats! Everyone loves stats, don’t they!? The budget for Pearl Harbor was $152.75m, and I should think they spent every last penny of it on the 40 minute action sequence that reminded me oh so much of Titanic. However, it made $198.5m in the US box office, £14.2m ov
er here in the lovely UK, ESP160,814,828 in Spain, and $2.3m in Denmark. Nice! Remember that’s all without video rentals and sales, and merchandise such as posters and books. So you could say it did quite well!

The film was directed by Michael Bay who has directed films such as Coyote Ugly and Armageddon (Hey, no wonder it reminded me of this film! I honestly didn’t know this until I just looked the director up!) He must of liked Ben Affleck’s acting in Armageddon as he has him back again to play the main role in Pearl Harbor. To be fair, Ben Affleck is a good actor, you just don’t see him in enough films. He has the action face aswell as the romantic face for the ladies and can pull both directions off very well. Also in one of the main roles was Josh Hartnett. I can’t say I know the name, but I have seen him in a couple of other films, but for me, he just seems to ‘boyish’ to play the role and to me it looked like he would be best suited in a teen high school film! Sorry Josh!

So, onto the actual film itself. I think we all know that this is based on a true story, and I do think that some bits of it could have been done with a bit more sensitivity. We start the film by watching two boys playing around on a plane in some crop fields. One of the lad’s dad lands his plane and they rush off to get in. Things go wrong and off they go in the plane without even knowing how to drive the thing! We are then forwarded to 1940 (I think it was 1940 anyway) and we see them in the American Military as fighter pilots. The first half of the film is basically building up the story, the romance between Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) and Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale), a nurse for the soldiers in Pearl Harbor. The next half of the story involves the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and although I wasn’t counting, apparently the war scenes go on for 40 minutes.

This isn’t a film I’m going to give yo
u the plot too, there are far to many movie reviews that give you the plot for this film already out there, so I decided to stick with reviewing the actual film instead of the storyline and the characters. This film, although it doesn’t have great ratings everywhere was surprisingly good. I’m no historian, and to be honest, know more now about Pearl Harbor than I did before I watched the film. I go back as far as World War II, and even then, I don’t know properly what was going on, so I did learn a lot from this film, even if the film did portray it differently to what it actually was. American films always seem to make the Americans look good, and make you feel sorry for America, even if they do go and bomb other countries in retaliation. War’s are all politics and religion as far as I’m concerned, which is why I’ve never had much of an interest in them, but I do have a high interest in War films. This film grabbed me and pulled me in, unlike other films, it made me feel for the characters, mindyou, it did have long enough to build up the characters and it really did have me engrossed. On saying that, the last bit of it dragged on a bit, because you basically kind of knew it was back to a love story!

The Special Effects were excellent. They spent a lot of money on hundreds of actors and thousands of extras to bring this film to us, and they spent loads of money on make up! Like I have already said, it did remind me a little of Titanic in the way some of the scenes were done, but I liked Titanic a lot, so I really don’t see a problem there! There are a lot of explosions, some from under water missiles, and it really does look superb, and realistic, although I’m sure a lot of you will disagree with me for saying that. One of the ships did look a bit like cardboard though in one scene, which really can’t be a good thing! Special effects are something you take for granted in war films, they are mean to be t
here afterall, so I really don’t think that people take note of them as much as they maybe should. Pearl Harbor had great special effects, but they were in no way mind blowing.

The soundtrack was a bit part of the film. It supported both the love scenes and also the war scenes very well, and the tracks chosen were obviously thought about in great detail. One of the tracks I’m sure we are all pretty familiar with, ‘There you’ll be’ by Faith Hill. This track was actually written for the film, but didn’t get any airtime in the film itself, only the end credits had the song played, unless I missed something somewhere! That’s the only real track on the soundtrack though, the rest are from parts of the film itself, such as ‘And then I kissed him’ and ‘War’. Not something I would go out and buy, it wouldn’t feel the same without the film, but then everyone’s different.

So to wrap up, Pearl Harbor was a film I seemed to overlook, and I should imagine is a film some people think ‘oh no, but that’s 3 hours long, I can’t be bothered to watch that’. We I felt the same, but I gave it a go and I liked it. Whether I would sit through another 3 hours of it I don’t know, I would if I had the time to spare for one movie. It also doesn’t have superb reviews all around the place, a bit like ‘The Blair Witch Project’. Some people like it, some people don’t. Infact from some of the reviews I have read on the film, some think it’s the best film ever, and others think it belongs in the bargain basket next to the door in woolworths. Whatever view they have, I liked the film. My recommendation is to watch the film, not to walk past it next time your hunting for a video. Don’t blame me if you don’t like it though, it really isn’t my fault! 4 out of 5 it is from me then.

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