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PEARL HARBOR

The attack on Pearl Harbor as depicted by action director Michael Bay
© 2001 Touchstone Pictures

By the time you read this, Michael Bay's PEARL HARBOR will have already made $100 million. Worse yet, due to what can only be considered collusion by the American news and entertainment media, PEARL HARBOR will have been enshrined as a memorial to the 60^th anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack...even though the actual anniversary won't occur for more than six months. Of course, by then the PEARL HARBOR DVD will be released and we can celebrate our nation's history all over again.

In his headlong rush to make an Oscar-winning cross between TITANIC and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, Bay has only succeeded in making a movie that's not quite as annoying as his previous two headache-inducing films: THE ROCK and ARMAGEDDON. Audiences that consider those two to be wonderful summer fun will no doubt be convinced they're seeing pure genius on the screen in PEARL HARBOR. By filling every scene with impossibly good-looking people and allowing composer Hans Zimmer to reintroduce his heart-tugging melodies each time they utter a line, Bay manages to coat all of his shots with a honey-colored gloss worthy of an American Express commercial. His refusal to hold any given shot more than four seconds shows, what is for him, an astonishing patience with the material.

However, therein lies the problem. The material is three-hours worth of feckless love story one that happens to include a couple of major, ILM-augmented battle sequences. Ben Affleck stars as Rafe McCawley (handsome and heroic) and Josh Hartnett costars as his childhood buddy Danny Walker (also handsome and heroic). They are shown in golden-hued flashbacks being chased by Danny's comically abusive father, whom young Rafe manages to infuriate by calling a German (this strange accusation is never explained or referenced again). A few years later the boys (who as nine-year-olds manage to get a biplane aloft without killing themselves) are hotshot pilots in the U.S. Air Force. In a scene lifted straight from TOP GUN, their commanding officer, no less a historical figure than Jimmy Doolittle (Alec Baldwin), gives them the standard speech about their inveterate hot-dogging. Why, if they weren't the two most brilliant and heroic daredevil pilots in the war, he'd be tempted to give them a real talking to.

But gol dang it, there's a war on, and Rafe's heroism is required overseas where American pilots are desperately needed to supplement the hapless R.A.F. during the air war over 'downtown London.' Rafe, who has already developed an instant love affair with the beautiful nurse Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale), is too heroic to let his personal life stand in the way of his duty, so he's off to Britain. He and Evelyn exchange sappy love letters heard in voice over and played over postcard images of Beckinsale lounging on the beach in a 1940s style bikini. But when Rafe is shot down over the waters of the North Atlantic, Evelyn and Danny find themselves thrust into each other's arms.

Surprise of all surprises, Rafe is not dead. This shouldn't be a real shocker seeing how Affleck is listed as the star of PEARL HARBOR and his character appears to die less than a third of the way through the movie. Nevertheless, several naïve moviegoers were heard gasping when Affleck appeared onscreen later in the movie: I can only assume these people had just returned from three decades in a sensory deprivation tank.

More than an hour of PEARL HARBOR runs by without a whiff of character conflict, so it's almost disconcerting when Rafe and Danny inevitably run afoul of each over the lovely Evelyn. This pivotal character conflict runs its course through two scenes each about two minutes long climaxing in a fistfight at a beachside bar. Even the aggrieved Rafe can't seem to muster up much genuine anger over the incident, however, and a few minutes later he and Danny are off in a convertible having a heart to heart chat. Rafe has gained some important philosophical insights from his experience. 'Returning from the dead wasn't all that I expected... but that's life,' he says. Luckily, the two flyboys manage to patch things up just in time for America's entry into World War II.

That's right, the Japanese have cannily used the first 90 minutes of the film to plan their attack on Pearl Harbor. We know this because approximately five minutes of footage is dedicated to showing Japanese actor Mako mouthing dire pronouncements as Admiral Yamamoto. Yamamoto just doesn't seem to have his heart in his work, however: 'A brilliant man would find a way not to fight a war,' he says dejectedly after he's congratulated on his ingenious planning. However, it's a good thing for us he went ahead with the plan because PEARL HARBOR would be pretty tough to sit through without its dazzling recreation of the attack on the U.S. Naval installation.

The 30-minute attack sequence is PEARL HARBOR's centerpiece, and Bay pulls out all the stops in an attempt to recreate the panic and epic devastation wreaked by the Japanese air force. It's spectacular stuff, although at least 70% of the credit has to go to Industrial Light and Magic for their incredible combination of miniatures and computer generated special effects, which put a fleet of 1940s-era battleships in the water only to blow them up with amazing attention to detail.

It's clearly Bay's (and producer/money-making-machine Jerry Bruckheimer's) intention to honor the men and women who suffered and gave so much during this pivotal moment in history. Unfortunately, the men behind ARMAGEDDON and BAD BOYS just can't make a movie without gratuitous stupidity. 'I think World War II just started!' Danny exclaims during the attackwords that would have been very reassuring to the British, the French and the Germans.

In one shot, a fellow nurse of Evelyn's is killed by Japanese strafing fire, but since this is both a Bay film and a PG-13-rated movie, we're not shown the horrifying details of such a demise. Instead, she simply disappears in a miniature explosion, as if she'd been fully loaded with gasoline. Later, she winds up as a casualty in the hospital where Evelyn works and there's not a speck of blood or dirt on her body. In fact, her elaborate period hairdo is completely unmussed.

As sad as this may sound, the entire battle seems to have been staged merely as an excuse to get our two heroic pilots into air combat. Once among the clouds, they act like two Luke Skywalkers blowing away seven Japanese planes. But it's a testament to how unininvolving this movie is that after almost two hours of buildup, the Japanese are still never characterized enough for us to really root against them. The dogfight scenes (which aren't up to the level of the earlier attack on Battleship Row) are sterile summer action movie pieces that pit CG aircraft against CG aircraft. Despite enough whooping and hollering from Rafe and Danny to fill three rodeos, it's hard to care who's shooting who.

PEARL HARBOR could have ended with Rafe and Danny returning to Battleship Row only to face the awful reality of how little their efforts mattered when compared to the wholesale slaughter on the ground below them. However, that would just be too danged serious for a summer blockbuster. Instead, Bay and screenwriter Randall Wallace (who is now publicly distancing himself from the movie) send the boys off on Jimmy Doolittle's raid on Japan. Again, this pivotal historical moment exists only to wring a little bit more heroism out of our two stars, who selflessly volunteer for this near-suicidal mission. American military leaders are initially against the raid, but their minds are quickly changed when President Franklin Roosevelt (an unrecognizable Jon Voight) rises out of his wheelchair and bellows 'Don't tell me it can't be done!' (Note: the scene plays eerily like something you'd expect to see in DR. STRANGELOVE.)

While in my opinion insulting, I wouldn't be surprised if most veterans, happy to receive a little recognition from teenagers who can barely recall the 'war to end all wars', eat it up. There's not one character in PEARL HARBOR with any human flaws (except for a bucktoothed soldier with a stutter, inserted for easy laughs), unless you count the fact that they just care too much as a flaw.

The fact that critics hate the movie won't deprive it of one dollar at the box office. When it becomes impossible to watch the local news without a PEARL HARBOR segment, then the issue has already been settled: the movie was a hit before it was even released. However, if Bay actually thinks he's going to get to declare himself King of the World come Oscar time, he'd better prepare for his own Day of Infamy.