Copyright
© 2001 by Michael
Segers,
All rights Reserved
Brought
to you by
Peanut.org
Cast?
Director? Other details?
Check
out
Pearl
Harbor
On
the Internet
Movie DataBase
“You are going to put down Pearl Harbor?
You’re going to sound unpatriotic,” a friend cautioned me.
I don’t know when having good taste became unpatriotic—except maybe
during this past week, marked by the opening of this excessive movie and the
closing of discussion about the excessive National
World War II Memorial. This
film gives me a sense of déjà vu all over again, since the first film I
reviewed for this series was The
Thin Red Line, another three-hour monstrosity.
Rather than just slip into my ravin’ mode, as I did with that one, I
want to use this review of Pearl Harbor, to try to get something of some value out of
the three hours I endured, as an answer to those folks who
ask me why we big, bad critics pick on popular films.
The truth is, I cannot imagine what could make this film popular, despite
Disney’s cynical exploitation. OK,
they draw in the old-timers, who don’t usually go out to movies, with the
title. There are a lot of fireworks
for the boys, and the main story—of a love triangle with hardly any
fireworks—will draw in the girls. The
Japanese are so toned down that I wonder how such folks ever came to launch such
a deadly raid or to build such good cars… and how much money this film will
make in Japan?
There’s one group in America that’s not much drawn to tales of the
good old days in the 40’s and 50’s… and that’s black Americans.
But, this film even makes a marketing pitch to that demographic group
with the true story of the heroism of Dorie Miller (Cuba Gooding Jr., whom
we’ve seen recently in Men
of Honor, a whole film about a real black sailor),
about three percent of the total running time of the film.
Considering that he really has no connection with the others (and black
sailors wouldn’t likely have had any connection with white sailors), maybe
three percent is pretty good—and how many tickets does each percentage point
equal?
The Miller story illustrates the main problem with this film.
It’s not a unified film: it’s a mini-series in disguise, with all the
artistry and insight of a mini-series. The
main story is not about Pearl Harbor at all but about raffish Rafe (Ben Affleck),
who goes off to England to fly and fight Germans before America gives him the
opportunity to do so. He leaves
behind nurse Evelyn, his girl friend (Kate Beckinsale), and Danny (Josh Hartnett),
his best friend and flying buddy since childhood, and then he dies.
Well, if you believe Ben Affleck is going to get knocked off that early
on, then you deserve a spoiler.
Now, guess which distraught friend and grieving girlfriend are left to
comfort each other. Guess who
returns. See how easy this is?
Great films, even moderately good films, do a little work and maybe even
make the audience do a little work. Guess
which two guys get into a fight, and guess who announces she is pregnant
by—you guessed it—the guy who hasn’t been killed once already.
Who really cares?
There is no spark, no passion, no originality in the whole messy thing.
As we move into a bar full of sailors erupting into a brawl, I was
expecting some on-screen fun. Believe
me, it will be worth your while to hunt up Seven Sinners
(1940) on video
to see just much damage sailors can do to a bar.
Of course, that film has John Wayne swinging his fists, while,
as far as I could tell, the brawl in Pearl Harbor relies on a
swinging camera. I could be less
than gallant by suggesting that the main difference is that the previous melee was in honor of Marlene Dietrich, while this one is on behalf of
Kate Beckinsale.
Typical of so many films of our time, what the film lacks in human
feeling, it tries to compensate for with special effects, in this case, over a
half hour of special effects. Actually,
this is more life a special wallow in blood and guts, which adds nothing to our
knowledge or feelings about history or life.
Is it supposed to entertain to watch this carnage? Well, I guess it depends upon how you felt about the ending
of Titanic.
Then, the third installment of the mini-series is a sort of Readers Digest condensation of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, which does have Alec Baldwin but doesn’t have much of anything else. And that pretty much sums up this film. It wants to be a big, old-fashioned red-white-and-blue extravaganza, but while it has the perspiration, blood, and various other body fluids, it sadly lacks the inspiration.
POPCORN