Rating: 
Summary: Decent Effects - Wasted Film
Review: Maybe - maybe - something can be said for the special effects in this film. The aerial sequences were exciting. The images of ships rolling over and bombs triggering - while flatly inaccurate - were nice eye candy.But 'Pearl Harbor' as a whole is a disappointment. The plot is both long-winded and thin. It makes a friendly nod towards historical and technical accuracy, yet nonetheless falls short on a number of counts. What's mystifying is that it didn't need to. For instance, the full drama of the Doolittle Raid was *not* presented faithfully by this film. Find any photo of Hornet launching the bombers and note the condition of the seas. The film shows Hornet launching in calm water and bright sunlight: in truth Hornet was ploughing through waves so high they broke over her forecastle, and the bombers' launch was timed so as not to send them straight into the sea. The film could have been more dramatic - and truer to history - by capturing such details ... but its makers choose not to. Instead it focuses on an uninspiring love story and special effects. The truly sad thing about the movie is the opportunities its makers passed up. The first year of the war in the Pacific has no shortage of dramatic and worthwhile stories: Pearl Harbor, the last 30 days of the carrier Yorktown, the Battle of Midway, the pivotal confrontation at Guadalcanal. None of these stories have a modern telling that takes full advantage of film-making technology: all of them deserve it. The film 'Pearl Harbor' falls short of its potential - and one might argue its responsibility - to tell the story of 7 December 1941 for its own sake, on its own terms. Its makers apparently felt the need to pretty up and dilute the story for, one assumes, commercial gain. It's difficult to dispute the film's commercial success, but one wonders if a more truthful film could not have enjoyed similar success ... and contributed much more to its viewers' understanding of history.
Rating: 
Summary: much better than the mvoie released
Review: The DVD version is much better than the movie released. The added scenes are necessary to bring back the true horrors of war and to balance out the romantic vehicle used to move the story plot along from place to place. In reality the people played by the actors never existed, yet the war did and for so many people it was a living hell that America and the world should not forget. That Americans are offen divided in peace time but become one people in time of crisis and war, and that no attacker has ever survived untouched by her response. As the Japanese pacific fleet commander warned on the that faithful day, we have awakened a sleeping monster, on that day he knew how the war would eventually end for Japan. As the movie points out things would have very different if the aircraft carriers were in the harbor that morning. It is those same carriers that launch the Dolittle raid on Tokyo and flight in Midway later. Overall very good filming and sound for those who have 5.1 systems a good DVD.
Rating: 
Summary: Most Heart-Breaking movie I've ever seen
Review: This is one of those movies that you can't forget. The kind that when you think of it makes you catch your breath. It gave me a greater awareness of what those in the military sacrifice to protect our country.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT MOVIE!!
Review: Great movie. Everyone should see this. I think this a great love story and a really great depiction of the actual thing. A little graphic but its rated R. I love this movie. A real piece of good film.
Rating: 
Summary: i'd call it another chick flick
Review: or should i say another cheesy love story. pearl harbor, what a bummer. i didn't even know this movie was debuting until i was watching the 2001 academy awards on ABC and then saw the commercial for it. to he honest, i was shocked and looking forward to seeing this film when it came to theaters that may. it's sad to say that while watching this movie, it felt as if i was procrastinating in my seventh grade history class. how much effort did this writing staff put into this movie's plot? what the hell was up with the sexy nurse thing? during WWII, the nurses they used were different as night and day from those chicks that were used in this movie. i don't even think younger nurses were used to treat wounded soldiers during WWII. they didn't wear exclusive hearstyles, makeup, cosmetics, and neither uniforms such as fitted tops along with short skirts and pantyhose etc. but, i don't see a problem with that because since this was a hollywood film, it would have been proper to glamour these nurses up a bit =) when you think things couldn't get any more corny, ben affleck shows up, after we all thought he was killed in that bomber jet. i'm not even going to fuss about the ending of this film, it's not even worth talking about. talk about so much money put into making a historical film and we get some flick about two service men fighting over a sexy nurse.
Rating: 
Summary: The only way to watch this flick ... on DVD!
Review: Watching this film in theaters was like an excruciating visit to the dentist's office for a couple of fillings, an extraction, and a root canal. My problems with the movie are threefold: 1) The film sets up a love triangle with an obvious resolution. There's no reason to watch the rest of the movie when you know how the triangle will be resolved, yet over 2/3 of the movie is devoted to developing said triangle. Watching over two hours of material that predictable is incredibly tedious to the point of painfulness. Plus, the viewer has no reason to side with any party of the triangle, giving him or her no reason to care how it's resolved anyway. 2) Said love triangle aside, the film should have ended shortly after the climatic attack and battle of Pearl Harbor. Everyone from the screenwriter to director to production staff apparently has no grasp of how story structures work, and placing such a powerful sequence only 2/3 of the way through the movie leaves the audience exhausted and apathetic through the remaining hour or so of the film. There's just no way a true climax/resolution sequence can work with such a powerful sequence preceding it. 3) Historical facts were twisted in places, and extraneous side stories (such as Cuba Gooding Jr.'s factually-based role) simply take away from the rest of the film's action. This movie could have been easily an hour shorter and much more powerful without all the irrelevant side stories that contributed nothing to the movie's plot. Interesting subplots relevant to the film such as the possibility that the British had intelligence of the attack beforehand yet delayed handing it to Washington (or that FDR possibly intentionally ignored it) to draw the US into the war were left out entirely. Again, the creators of the film thoroughly demonstrated their lack of plotting skills. Those complaints aside, the DVD version allows the viewer to experience the powerful scenes (such as the Pearl Harbor attack and it's horrific aftermath) while winnowing out the fluff. The viewer is free to skip past whatever portions of the film he or she wishes, plus experience all the special features included with the disc--so the DVD itself gets three stars from me rather than the one or two the movie itself deserves.
Rating:
Summary: Love it
Review: I belive this movie is inspirational if you are ever in a romance slump. IT is very well developed even though it may not portray the true facts of the real pearl harbor. I find this movie to be very though provoking.
Rating:
Summary: Yawn.
Review: I can sum this movie up in one sentence, and I quote South Park-- "I get it now--Job has all his children killed and Michael Bay gets to keep making movies...there is no God".
Rating:
Summary: Love this!!!!
Review: I love this show, this show helps younger people realize how hard difficult but how the Americans pulled through this is a good show to take home and enjoy the thrills and others in this show!! I LOVE IT!!
Rating:
Summary: A thouroughly bad movie with great extra features
Review: It's funny--I remember reading an interview with Michael Bay, part of a little press junket for the movie "Pearl Harbor", a movie that I had waited eagerly to see since viewing the trailers some months before. In the interview he overtly admitted that James Cameron was one of his biggest influences as a filmmaker. So it is not very surprising to discover that this movie more or less follows the formula presented in the much better "Titanic". In the movie, two Army pilots (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) fight for the affections of a nurse (Kate Beckinsale), and to complicate matters, the Japanese attacks Pearl Harbor. Bummer. The movie is filled with flaws:
1. The trailers for the movie gave the illusion that the movie would be "Tora! Tora! Tora!" with better special effects. It was not, and only after watching the movie would one be aware of it. I liked "Titanic", but then again, with that movie I KNEW what I was getting into. 2. Love triangles are cliche, and a movie like this one could probably get away with it; however the filmmakers chose instead to foolishly make all three corners of the triangle likable. Such a spin should be reserved for a more artsy movie that is trying to make you think. 3. The tragedy of the air raid at Pearl Harbor is trivialized by using it as a means to further a love story as opposed to presenting it as the catalyst to America's involvment in WWII. At times this is disappointing, at other times, appalling.
I'm trying to ignore historical inaccuracies but I can't help it--hey, I didn't know they had Spruance-class destroyers in 1941! Also, there's no such place as downtown London. I always thought there was a Central London. Shows what I know. 4. The movie, which would have ended on a stronger note by concluding with the air raid, drags on into a perfunctory depiction of Col. Doolittle's raid on Tokyo--a scene which did not have the intended impact. It also lacked the visual flourish and detail of the 30+ minute-long air raid sequence. It is in the movie for no other reason than to knock a corner out of the love traingle. 5. Finally, the gore of the movie is sort of out of place. Since this was a PG-13 movie that was angled at teenyboppers (and yes, Michael Bay, it would have been nice if I knew that!!), the effects of being shot/blown up are toned down to a 1950's filmmaking sort of level. We see Japanese planes strafe helpless sailors trying desperately to hold on to their ships and defend themselves, and when they get shot, the bullets don't punch huge holes in them and send blood flying everywhere, but instead leave a clean, fun-looking hole; the sailor clutches shot part of body, screams and falls over. When someone is too close to an explosion, the body is not torn apart by the concussion but merely lifted into the air and placed elsewhere. I half-expected some of the sailors to immediately get up after being thrown by an explosion, brush himself off and say to the camera, "That one was a doozy!" before rejoining the battle or getting a fun-looking hole punched in him. So if we follow the movie's logic, the hospital scene would be impossible because there was no bloodshed in the battle scene, at least, not the kind that warrants the need to dump spare blood into Coke bottles. Now, the DVD extras on this movie are something of an oddity--they're fantastic.
A documentary of the Pearl Harbor raid is included. It's almost like the filmmakers knew the movie lacked a lot of historical context (the motive for attacking Pearl Harbor, we are told in the movie, was something so simple it could be surmised in a single line of dialogue) and threw these in to supplement the lack of historical information in the movie. The "making of" featurettes are good, as you would imagine, but the unintentionally reveal a paradoxical fanatacism on the part of the special-effects house to "get the facts down" by looking at photographs taken of the raid in progress, which is bizzarre, given the historical gaffes in the movie's script. This movie is a definite "take it or leave it". The movie is ostensibly for teenagers; history buffs will no doubt hate it, as will military movie fans (not all of which are history buffs). Those people would benefit more from watching "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and looking for a Pearl Harbor documentary, sold separately.
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