Pearl Harbor
(2001)
war epic
directed
by : Michael Bay
featuring
: Ben Affleck - Josh Hartnett - Kate Beckinsale - Cuba Gooding Jr. - Tom
Sizemore
running
time : 3 hours 2 minutes
At the time of its release, this lavish
period war drama from hyperkinetic director Michael Bay became the most
expensive motion picture ever green-lighted by a studio. Ben Affleck stars
as Rafe McCawley, a military pilot stationed under Jimmy Doolittle (Alec
Baldwin) in New Jersey, along with his best friend from childhood, Danny
Walker (Josh Hartnett). Rafe is chomping at the bit to get involved in
World War II, but America has not entered the conflict, so he is forced
to fight on loan to the Royal Air Force in Britain, leaving behind his
beautiful girlfriend Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale). After Rafe goes overseas,
both Danny and Evelyn are transferred to the naval base in Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, where word arrives that Rafe has been killed in action. A grief-stricken
Evelyn and Danny become romantically attached, a situation that becomes
a lit powder keg when Rafe suddenly reappears, having survived his ordeal
in the European war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor puts the romantic
triangle on hold, as the best friends are ordered to undertake a top-secret
and highly dangerous retaliatory mission to bomb Tokyo, once again under
the command of Doolittle. Although the trio of leads are entirely fictional,
Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Sizemore, and Jon Voight co-star in the roles
of real-life historical figures. Pearl Harbor is based on a script by Randall
Wallace, writer of Braveheart (1995) and The Man In The Iron Mask (1998).
Taking a page from the production history of James Cameron's Titanic (1997),
many of the actors and filmmakers involved with Pearl Harbor deferred their
usual salaries until the film "broke even" at the box office.
While the surprise attack at the
centerpiece of this big-budget war drama is impressively re-created by
director Bay and his army of special-effects wizards, the romantic triangle
that sops up the bulk of the film is a waterlogged dud that renders the
entire enterprise turgid and enervating. In a craven, obvious attempt to
mimic the worldwide box-office success of Titanic, Bay and producer Jerry
Bruckheimer have fashioned a love story against the backdrop of a massive
tragedy. If only the filmmakers understood what made the coupling at the
center of that earlier film so memorable: its two central characters were
right for each other, he giving her something desperately needed. In Bay's
bilious vision, the great passion that Affleck and Hartnett feel for Beckinsale
and she for them seems built upon the fact that they are all possessors
of marvelous cheekbones and hairstyles. Overblown and overlong, Pearl Harbor
is to be commended for delivering great visual spectacle, but its soulless,
bottom-line-targeted groveling for the teen audience renders the film disappointingly
hollow and phony. The so-called "Greatest Generation" of Americans that
fought World War II deserves better than this money-making scheme, and
they've gotten it with Saving Private Ryan (1998), a film that features
flesh-and-blood people making reluctant sacrifices, not cardboard cutouts
whose uniforms have literally been redesigned for marketing purposes.