Rating: 
Summary: Harboring very few Pearls....
Review: It's cornier and dumber that a run of the mill mediocre studio movie from the 1940's but there are still many who insist it's
more than just 45 minutes of excellent effects. Effects that
try to be fairly historically accurate and are pretty impressive...but only have impact because we realize this really happened.The film is far too easy to pick on. Let's I suppose be thankful that a lot of people over-looked the actual quality and worth of the film itself and considered the fact that so much money, time and effort went to remembering and bringing to a new generation a dramatization of what happened oh so many years ago. If you're going to spend too much money on a film I suppose better they do one that attempts to recreate history. It would really honor the men and women of the armed forces if they had made a better film however. Tora Tora Tora looks like a masterpiece compared to this one, and
you really should buy yourself a copy of the infinitely superior
From Here to Eternity on DVD.
Rating: 
Summary: Pearl Harbor
Review: Hi my name is Kassy and i think that Pearl Harbor was an 5 star rating because it had some good action in it and some really good actors in it like Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin etc. I think that the producer the writer and the director all did a excellent job in making this movie good and exciting. I think that Danny and Evelin had more chemestry than when it was with Rafe and her. I felt that in this movie at the end they could have made it so that they (Danny,Rafe,and Evelin) could have all lived happily as friends and that Danny and Evelin should have ended up together for 2 reasons because she was having his baby and i felt that she loved him more, But that is just what i think. Anyway i really injoyed the movie and i think that Josh Hartnett was a great person to get to play that role as Danny, and i think that he will go a far way in his career and to prusue his dreams.This movie was one of the best movies i have seen in a long time.CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!You did a great job!Kassy!
Rating:
Summary: The worst movie of all time
Review: A tale filled with mellodramatic love scenes and horrible acting is not my idea of a night at the movies. The movie is filled with corny tearjerkers and portrays little of the actual historical value of Pearl Harbor. Ben Affleck gives one of his worse performances as a man, who, if this movie had any basis in reality would have died in aplane crash. His monotone, undeveloped charecter does little to boost the already pitiful movie. The only reason I gave this movie one star is because of Josh Hartnet, who is not only gorgeous, but also a blossoming actor.
Rating: 
Summary: This was actually two separate movies...
Review: The cliched love triangle of the 3 main characters who display all of the depth and nuance of an oak barrel and the action scenes. The other characters are merely props saying such overused historical one liners such as "Have we awakened a sleeping giant?" (truly awe-inspiring). The movie deserves credit for its fine photographic work and first rate special effects. If I could rate each piece separately, it would be 5 stars for F/x and 1 star for the story. It is sad that such an important event in our history was used as a prop to support an incredibly banal plot. If you waited to see this on video, consider yourself lucky. Finally, the film was far too long. There was nothing of any significance of any of these characters that should have taken more than 5 minutes to develop.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm not a chick flick fan... not after "Pearl Harbor"...
Review: I think this must've been the strategy behind the making of "Pearl Harbor": some girls wanted to take their boyfriends to a chick-flick-in-disguise. They added a battle scene or two, and voila! "Pearl Harbor" was born. I got to see this movie first as extra credit for a humanities class; the teacher shouldn't have bothered, because "Pearl Harbor" had very little to do with actual history. Most of the movie was bogged down in a sappy, overused love triangle, not to mention the improbability of a downed pilot coming back from the dead. Then, at the end, the Doolittle raid convieniently removed one of the men from the scene. Strange how perfectly things worked out for the other guy... Cliched lines and a syrupy plot make this one to avoid for all but diehard fans of the bushy-eyebrowed Hartnett and cleft-chinned Affleck.
Rating:
Summary: great action sequences; dreadful story
Review: One can only speculate about how great a part timing plays in determining whether or not any particular film is a success or failure at the box office. I suspect that had "Pearl Harbor" been released three or four months later than it was - in say September rather than June of 2001 - it might have been able to ride the wave of renewed American patriotism that accompanied that other Day of Infamy, the September 11th terrorist attacks - and found itself some true financial glory. As it is, the film will probably now enjoy a more lucrative life in its home video incarnation than it might otherwise have done under more normal circumstances. So I guess, in some ways, the film's timing ends up being fortuitous after all. Even from the start, one could see that "Pearl Harbor" was designed as a bald-faced attempt to replicate the unprecedented success of "Titanic." One is only amazed at how completely it fails. In both films a simplistic love story has been grafted onto an historic event of monumental tragedy, one that is familiar to the audience beforehand, comes mostly at the end, and offers scads of special effects wizards gainful employment in bringing the episode to life on the screen. In many ways, "Pearl Harbor" is simply the biggest, loudest and costliest example of that strange hybrid genre known as the "chick flick/war movie." (In this way, I guess filmmakers feel they have the whole date-night crowd covered). Somehow, one expects to find romance on a cruise ship. It feels right there. A romantic story seems somehow less apropos as the foundation for a film on this particular subject. In fact, the love triangle scenario that makes up fully the first half of this film's enormous three-hour running time is of such surpassing banality that one begins to wonder if anyone bothered to read the script before the actors were pushed out in front of the cameras. For it is quite obvious that all the creative minds engaged in bringing this film to completion were focused far more on the massive reconstructed sets, elaborate explosions and jaw dropping special effects than on anything so simple and banal as character development or thematic depth. It would be hard to imagine three less interesting characters than Rafe (catch the All-American hero name yet!), Danny and Evelyn to serve as the focal point for a film on this important a subject. The first two (played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) are childhood buddies, now turned bomber pilots, who happen to fall in love with the same beautiful nurse (played by Kate Beckinsale). Just think back to the complex characters at the core of "From Here to Eternity." In that film, so absorbing and grand were those figures and the situations in which they found themselves that the Pearl Harbor attack actually stayed, for the most part, in the background. In "Pearl Harbor," we are never allowed to forget that the sole purpose for the movie's existence is the attack sequence. Every moment of the first half is painful to watch - from the awkward and silly first meetings, to the sappy and drippy love scenes, to the inevitable fistfight between the two best friends just hours before they will be called upon to demonstrate brotherhood in action for a greater cause. Rick, the main character in "Casablanca," uttered the famous truism that the travails of three insignificant people don't "amount to a hill of beans" in the face of events of global importance - and that philosophy has never seemed more on the money than in the case of "Pearl Harbor." But then when you are fretting over making back those untold millions you've lavished on your star-studded production, you don't dare allow yourself to entertain such subversive thoughts. I hate to have to say this but the pasteboard love story that weakly props up "Pearl Harbor" ends up being an insult to both those who survived and those who perished in the holocaust. What is NOT an insult to their memories, however, is the attack sequence itself. Here the wretched movie almost redeems itself, for not only is this scene breathtakingly realized in its complexity and scope, but it also captures the poignancy of the devastation in amazingly graphic terms. The gruesomeness of much of the death and carnage put before us makes us fully appreciate, for the first time I think, the enormity of the horror and suffering that accompanied that event. "Pearl Harbor" justifies its brilliant excesses by bringing this moment to epic life for a whole generation who has heretofore probably encountered it only as a highlighted study note in some dry high school or college textbook. For a glorious half hour or so, the filmmakers husband all the resources of modern special effects to plunge us into an epochal moment in our nation's history. Herr, indeed, is technological excess employed in a salutary purpose. The advantage in seeing "Pearl Harbor" on video rather than in the theatre is that, in the latter venue, one could only snooze through the torpid first half and wake refreshed when the bombs started dropping and the guns firing. Now, with the power of the remote in one's hand, one can simply fast forward to all the good parts and leave the sappy ones behind.
Rating: 
Summary: A little frantic, but not bad!
Review:
It was an entertaining movie. The actors are probably better known to the current generation than to those of us in our eighth decade. Like many movies today, the producers seem to be trying hard to be "realistic." The love story is complicated by the erroneous report of one of the hero's death, and so his girl falls for someone else and, naturally, gets impregnated at the first opportunity. The actual attack on Oahu is depicted as a frenetic two hours in which the Japanese were virtually unchallenged, and their bombs wreaked devastation unparalled in the annals of warfare. A single bomb often destroyed a hangar or battleship.
Roosevelt is played by an actor with bug-eyes who didn't quite carry it off, and who referred to over 3,000 victims lost, when actually the count was nearer 2,000. Actually, the Japanese lost nearly ten percent of their aircraft, either shot down by our planes or with anti-aircraft fire. It wasn't a walk in the park for them. Pearl Harbor devastated the United States Pacific fleet. Twenty-one of our ships were sunk or disabled. However, all but three of them were repaired and recommissioned before the war ended. The actors who are youthful enough to play the parts required in such a movie, based on events that happened sixty years ago, are not qualified by life experience to depict people of that generation realistically. They don't speak the same language, and they are far too urbane. If war movies are your cup of tea, this was a good one. The visual effects were startling. It was generally over-acted, but one expects that. Perhaps it's time to put that war behind us. It cannot truly be recaptured, except using films made at the time from gun cameras and through the lenses of combat photographers who were there. At least, in this one, they didn't use the standard footage of a flight our good old SBD Douglas "Dauntless" dive bombers, pretending they were Japanese dive bombers as most Pearl Harbor movies do. Every time I see that, I see red. All in all, it was an impressive dramatic movie. Joseph H. Pierre, USN (Ret.)
Rating:
Summary: Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck are great together
Review: I know this may not be much of a help to many of you. But most of the story would be givin away if I told you the rest. Pearl Harbor is about two best friends named Danny (Josh Hartnett) and Rafe (Ben Affleck) who always wanted, pretended and dreamed of flying every since the were kids. When they get older the both Join the U.S. Navy. Then Rafe falls in love with Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale), one of the Navy nurses. Later Rafe volunteers to help fight the war in france.
Sorry I can't tell you any more of the plot becasuse I wouldn't want to ruin it for you. But I can tell you one last thing... If you're like me (totally in love with Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck) you'll love this movie because they look really cute when they were their white muscle tank top and get really sweaty.
I know this wasn't a huge help. But I do hope is help some.
Rating:
Summary: Not as good as it should have been
Review: If it had been made by Stephen Spielberg or Ridley Scott, this could have been one of the best war films of all time. Instead it was made by two people who think 30 minutes of fire on a few ships and 2 and half hours of love story makes a good war movie. It was still an OK movie. As for the DVD, what's with switching discs half way through? Sure, put the special features on a different disk, but at least keep the entire movie on one.
Rating:
Summary: A sad attempt at setting a predictable romance in war.
Review: This was quite a let down when it comes to movies. The cinematography was wonderful, however it was severely hindered by a poor script that was monotonous, predictable, and overdone. It was like they made a story so they could have an excuse to charge people for 20-30 minutes of special effects. Oh well, what else is new in Hollywood?
| 
