Rating: 
Summary: 'Enemy' denied humanity and believability
Review: In addition to the historical military inaccuracies which have already been mentioned in detail on these pages, I would add the unfortunate stereotyping of Japan's military leaders as a major negative. Indeed, we are at a time in history where such silly cardboard cut-outs are no longer necessary - if they ever were - in trying to portray the psychological truths that plunged the U.S. and Japan into war with each other. The director was apparently lazy or just stupid. The idiotic rendering of Japanese and things Japanese in this movie dismisses it from serious consideration as a thing of value or merit. It's trash.
Rating: 
Summary: Serious subject... no. Decent popcorn movie... you bet!
Review: "Pearl Harbor" is meant to be as historically accurate as "Titanic" was. This isn't so much about the attack, as a love story which happens to be set against the backdrop of the "day that will live in infamy." Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckensale make for an engaging love triangle. But the centerpiece of the movie remains the effects laden attack on Pearl Harbor. In a detailed, brutal (yet surprisingly non-bloody) 40 minute sequence, America gets a wake up call that, even 60 years removed, puts a lump in your throat. Is this a great movie? No. Affleck is lacking something as an actor and as a leading man. The effects work is superior. The love story gets to be a bit predictable. But, overall it is worth the nearly three hours of your life.
Rating:
Summary: A Historical Disaster
Review: This movie is an absolute INSULT to anyone who has served in the Navy. It is without question the WORST I've ever seen from a technical standpoint. Their technical advisers should be ashamed to cash their checks. What a joke!!! I had high hopes for this movie, and suffered through all the romance garbage only to be appalled at the blatant problems with the action secquences. MAN! SO many shots of ships that weren't even BUILT until long after WWII. AND even worse, all those shots of ships with NO HULL numbers. DUH! No hull numbers means NOT COMMISSIONED! Well, if you want to see a film about Pearl Harbor, SKIP this joke! IT is a fictional love story that insults anyone interested in history!
Rating: 
Summary: Watchable trash
Review: The director and producers seem to have followed a recipe called 'How to make a blockbuster'. - Take two attractive young men that guys want to be and girls want to date.
- Add a love interest.
- Pack in lots of action sequences that have worked in other hit movies. Pearl Harbor is another one of those hollywood films where they feel that portraying the historical events accurately isn't exciting enough and so they need to be fictionalized in some way. If you're looking for a history of the Attack on Pearl Harbor then see Tora! Tora! Tora! and if you are looking for a decent action film then there are plenty of others to choose from.
Rating:
Summary: Hurl Harbor
Review: "Pearl Harbor" is an action-packed, highly entertaining historical drama that tries as hard as it can to get it right. But be warned that in order to enjoy this film, you have to endure all of its clichés and historical inaccuracies or simply fast-forward past them as I wound up doing. LOVE STORY
First and foremost, "Pearl Harbor" is a love story, or as one witty viewer put it, "Two guys love one woman and-oh-incidentally, some ships get bombed in Pearl Harbor." The two guys in question are childhood friends, Rafe (Ben Affleck), and Danny (Josh Hartnett), who grow up to be fighter pilots and fall in love with the same navy nurse, (Kate Beckinsale). The film begins promisingly enough with the boys standing on Rafe's farm admiring his father's crop dusting maneuvers, joyfully oblivious to the toxic pesticides wafting down upon them from the sky. A few years later, the boys have grown up to be fighter pilots training for a war that everyone knows will inevitably reach American soil and borrowing the tower buzzing plot device from "Top Gun". Rafe is the first to fall in love with the pretty naval nurse but when he is presumed dead after getting shot down over the English channel, his best friend and his paramour become an item. But Rafe manages to return home alive and suddenly the three principle characters are caught in a dilemma of who loves whom and who love whom even more. It's an interesting scenario, but unfortunately, the film takes the sentimental and campy route. You may feel differently but I had to fast forward past all of the dialog between Rafe, Danny, and the nurse. It wasn't hard to guess what they were saying to each other anyway. In case you think I'm being too harsh, it might help to keep in mind that the film makers ran various love scenarios by focus groups to see what would outcome would most likely appeal to audiences. In other words, they're trying to play you. WAR MOVIE
"Pearl Harbor" is an awesome war movie from a visual perspective but contains some of the most wretched lines in cinema (I just want to matter). For anyone who enjoyed "Saving Private Ryan",this film is a must see. The battle scenes, particularly the aerial combat scenes and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the launching of B-25 Mitchels from the carrier U.S.S. Hornet are astounding. Be warned however, that the raid on Pear Harbor is simply painful to watch. The film captures the carnage and the tragedy of sinking ships as well as sailors getting burned, strafed, bombed, and drowned with gut wrenching precision (some of which it lifts from "Private Ryan"). It's both difficult and fascinating to watch and you will definitely come out of it with renewed compassion for survivors of Pearl Harbor and other acts of illegal military aggression. The film also does an admirable job of presenting the dangers and difficulties of America's counter attack against Tokyo, using carrier born B-25 bombers. Unfortunately, this too is mired by melodrama, and the presence of Rafe and Danny. HISTORICAL DRAMA
Here's where the film tries to get it right and rarely succeeds. I commend Director Michael Bay for trying to portray the Japanese and in a humane and objective manner. In one scene the Japanese high command reveals that the U.S. oil embargo against Japan has left it with only enough fuel to power its war machine for eighteen more months, essentially amounting to a military death sentence. The film also credits Admiral Husband Kimmel for his awareness of Pearl Harbor's vulnerability and his ill-fated attempts to protect it. It is worth noting, however, that the film botches the historical record in a few vital areas. At one point, an earnest naval intelligence officer announces that the Japanese fleet could easily be tracked if only the Americans could break their naval code. Actually, America did break that code as early as 1929 but for reasons that historians still debate today, that intelligence was never made available to Admiral Kimmel. In another scene the American executive government announces that it must cannibalize the Pacific fleet in order to send more equipment to the beleaguered British forces in Europe. Nope-sorry-but that is incorrect in two respects. First, prior to Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt launched an aggressive new ship-building program that would have completed one hundred new naval vessels by 1943. In addition, the pacific fleet was not cannibalized as the film suggests, but as a matter of luck or deliberate human intervention, its best ships including all aircraft carriers were on maneuvers in the Pacific during the raid on Pearl Harbor. As horrible as the losses were on that day, the damage in military terms could have been much worse. In fact, most of the ships that were sunk in Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 were WW I relics. This doesn't mean the film deliberately lies when in fact it draws on popular historiography of Pearl Harbor. But if you want a more accurate picture of what happened and why, there are several good books available ("Day of Deceit", "At Dawn We Slept", and "The Emperor's Codes") as well as great film, "Tora Tora Tora". PATRIOTIC HOMAGE
Of course "Pearl Harbor" can't help but end with ten minutes worth of patriotic verbiage reminding us how it's always important to suspect foreign countries of evil intentions and to go to war whenever we feel like it, because things would have worked out pretty well if we did so then. I think history and politics are more complex than that but I understand why the filmmakers inserted unnecessary flag waving material in the end. This was one of the sections I wound up skipping over. CONCLUSION
Masterful visual effects aside, this film will not teach anyone a thing about Pearl Harbor. While it may not be as flashy, I highly recommend "Tora Tora Tora" for its far more intelligent, inclusive, and objective portrayal of Pearl Harbor. Again, you may want to mute or fast-forward your way through the wretched dialog of this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe hystorically innacurate, but a great love story!!!
Review: OK, as a histery major at a MAJOR american university, I'll tell you right off the bat this film had some serious problems with its histery - where was the Titantic? Doesn't Bay know it was sunk at Pearl Harbor along with the Battleship Lusitania? And what was with that Dr. Doolittle raid? Dr. Doolittle was a Canadian zookeeper, not a bomber pilot. And it wasn't an air raid that devastated Vietnam after Pearl Harbor, it was Texas-sized planet killer asteroids dropped from stealth planes. Didn't Bay see "Final Countdown"? And when did Ben Affleck become, like, a fighter pilot? They could at least have given him a jet plane, or used Tom Cruise, who is a real jet pilot. Other than these ridiculous hitorical innaccurasies, it was a great summer blockbuster film! The sizzling chemistry between the two pilots was amazing and heartwarming. Cuba Gooding was fantastic as the black sailor, OMG I didn't even know they had black people back then! Basically it was about like, these totally cool people, like Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett and all these geeks, who were like, foreign or something and totaly evil dorks who can't even speak english. Then the cool people like totally kick the their geek Vietnamese butts. We'll be renting this film for decades to come. Sure it wasn't highbrow, but that isn't what films are for. If you want highbrow watch Fox News.
Rating:
Summary: Execreble tripe
Review: This movie, as all of Micheal Bay's movies, is simply unimaginable. Pointless, infantile, racist, stupid, boring and as usual, patriotic in a comic book and highly insulting way. There isn't a single redeeming feature to this awful film; history is massacred, the love story is a boring puerile mess, and it's set in 1941, when all Americans were evidently innocent virginal children.
Unrealistic on every level (the battle scene is absurd, with fighters buzzing between buildings at 15' above the ground!). By the time the actual bombing occured (what, like 8 hours into the movie), I was shocked that the Titantic didn't just happen to be in Pearl Harbor for the bombing scene, only to be sunk by marauding, moustache twirling Japs, or that no asteroids struck Japan in retaliation for their evil crimes. Don't Japanese all wear those cone shaped little hats? Why weren't they wearing those? Otherwise, I would rather rub cayenne pepper flakes in my eyes rather than see this odious bit of drivel. I'd rather tongue kiss a horny, pissed off grizzly bear. I'd rather watch my grandparents have sex. Simply put, being an intelligent person watching this film is as terrifying as being a nine year old boy at a NAMBLA convention. Micheal Bay should be slowly dissolved in sulfuric acid, beaten with 200 ton concrete slabs, eaten by Godzilla (the real one), vomited up at supersonic speeds straight through the skull of Jerry Bruckheimer, reanimated and coated with super tropical bleach, then cut to pieces with a chainsaw by Leatherface himself and then scattered into the far corners space by NASA. A worthy goal for 2004. Stop this talentless idiot before it's too late!
Rating:
Summary: 3.5 stars is more accurate
Review: People rag on this movie way too much. In spite of the cheesy dialogue, the movie is surprisingly pretty engaging. That is a sign that there are alot of good things going for it. The script does have its (very few) moments. The acting is good for the most part, and of course the action and special effects are outstanding. But I do agree that the movie seems to be trying way too hard to be emotional and moving. Alot of unnecessary scenes are in this movie just to make the characters look cool (like slow-motion exits from planes through smoke...with a flag in the background...i mean...come on). Of course I was hoping this movie was going to be a great oscar contending war movie or something. But, the movie was made by Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer...I accept it for what it is...a solid action movie.
Rating:
Summary: What a waste
Review: The cinematography was beautiful and the sets were beautiful, catching the time period perfectly. What a pity that they had to be wasted on this pitiful excuse of a movie! Much like "Titanic" which preceded it (for which the above paragraph could apply in its entirety), "Pearl Harbor", rather than being a great movie about a historic tragic event, offended the viewer by using the event merely as a backdrop for a "chick flick" plot...and a very POOR one at that. I truly looked forward to this movie, believing the writers and producers would show this event the respect it deserved. So sad that the remaining WWII vets get THIS as a "tribute". What an insult! One can only envision the next step being a romance story called "9-11: The Twin Towers".
Rating: 
Summary: an ok movie
Review: I thought this movie was a good movie it wasn't a great historical masterpiece it was a summer blockbuster movie and people should know that and like most people I like blockbusters Ben aflek is my favorite actor and he does a good job in this movie the attack on pearl harbor its self is spectacular
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