Pearl Harbor

Rating:
Summary: If you like this, you need your head examined.
Review: This movie was just dreadful. They took an important part of American history and wrapped a stupid love story around it. The acting was awful; the fictitious events created for the movie are so predictable that it hurts your head. That was 2 hours of my life that I will never get back.

Rating:
Summary: The Titanic with bombs
Review: To me it seemed like two separate movies spliced together. As previously stated the romance was inept and ridiculous. The behavior of the main characters made me dislike all three of them. But I was drawn to the movie because I am a war buff so I won't dwell on the romance.

First of all what are the chances that Ben Afflecks character Volunteered for and fought in the battle of Britain, got shot down behind enemy lines [what was he doing there it was the Battle of BRITAIN?], almost died but was smuggled out by partisans, came back to Pearl (why in the world would the Army send him all the way back to Pearl Harbor to recover) just in time for the Japanese attack, Then fly there against the Japanese. And it doesn't end there he then is hand picked by Doolittle to fly the famous raid on Tokyo where he crashlands in China and wins a firefight (with a handgun) against seasoned Japanese infantry (with rifles and certainly no slouches at the time). Why not keep going? He could have fought in the battle of Midway, then arrive at Guadalcanal just as Henderson field opened, later D-day then the Battle of the Bulge then maybe he could have dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima. Why would a fighter pilot be picked for a bombing mission they had plenty of well trained B-25 pilots at the time? Does the Army send all of your friends and flight crew and super mechanic with you when you get transfered to a top secret carrier mission? A bit too far fetched for me.

Ok Now this Mechanic. He has a radio that can talk to anything anytime, wow. I'm no WW2 communications expert but I am pretty sure they did not have that capability. Then while he carried the radio and a large machine gun up ten flights of stairs he kept full communication with the pilots and his crew on the ground! He arrives at the top of the tower just in time to get off a sweet deflection shot just as the Zero happened to be going by. I won't comment about the game of chicken, just think about it please. Oh and they used the dud bomb thats not a dud twice, tsk tsk.

Historically accurate? The big picture maybe, but there were so many farcicle details that I felt it took away from what really happened there it wasn't a drama it was a disaster. Not any less of a disaster than 9/11.

Now I have to say some thing nice. The special effects make this movie worth seeing once, but don't buy it. Rent it or wait for it to come on tv. I collect war movies but I don't want this one

Rating:
Summary: Man, what a waste!
Review: When I heard that Randall Wallace had written it, I tought: "Well, this is gonna be great". I like war movies and I liked BRAVEHEART a lot. I had seriou suspicions because Ben Affleck was in it, but anyway I tought it would be a great movie.

Man, IT IS NOT! The film is polished to the limit, the love triangle is annoying, really ANNOYING. The way they used the Doolittle raid was a joke in the story. This is a heartless, big-budget movie, like countless others. The only scene I liked was the air combat over the Dover cliffs, between RAF Spitifres and the German ME 109. Very well made.

Rating:
Summary: This is the version that should have been released!
Review: The directors cut of Pearl Harbor is unbelievable! All the "gloss over" that everyone is complaing about is taken out of this version. This version shows the realities of the Pearl Harbor attack, and adds a lot of emtional elements to the story. Disney should have not tried to please everyone by cutting down the movie to PG-13. I guarentee that if this version was what was released in the theater it would have done 100 times better!

Rating:
Summary: Fails on so many levels
Review: Am i mistaken when i assume that a romance or a war film (or both as is the case here), should elicit some kind of emotional response. This film fails miserably on both levels. Some of the corniest dialogue and worst acting since my kindergaten school play resulted (myself and other people in the cinema) in laughter rather than any other emotion. The situation itself-girl in love with boy 1, boy 1 leaves presumed dead, girl pregnant by boy 2, boy 1 comes back etc, etc-is surely one of the main and least original standard plotlines grafted onto any hollywood romance thesedays. Anywho, enough people have commented on the inadequacies of this subject.

What amazes me is the number of people praising the 45 min 'action fight sequence'. Yes, i can accept that visually it is quite an impressive spectacle, but a) it has been done before, and done better, and b)it fails to engage the viewer (or maybe its just me), Scenes of warships expolding, limbs flying round the place, and men drowning in trapped hulls should depict the horrors of war, and should arouse some sense of tragedy or sadness in the audience. However, you should not come away from such scenes with an attitude of 'who cares', as these tragic views are ridiculed by the superhero antics of Affleck and Hartnett. This film fails to convey the true nature of warfare, because of the ill placed emphasis on the love story of this trio, and not on a wider range of issues. NB, Saving Private Ryan works because we can relate to both the soldiers involved and see the effects afterwards, and we are not directed to care about which toy-boy Beckinsale will wind up with.

And as if our emotional reactions to this film have not be judged so ineptly thus far, Messrs Bay and Bruckheimer cannot ignore the urge to add a further hour or so to this whole debacle with a clumsy portrayal of the Doolittle Raid, in order to remind us, the ignorant audience, that in fact, Pearl Harbor was not an ignomious defeat for the USA, but we actually showed those nasty Japs a thing or two. I am sorry to break the bad news to everyone, but we got our rear ends kicked that day in December. Oh and this is a bad film as well.

Rating:
Summary: Where is the zero star choice?
Review: I would like to thank Diane Huggins' husband for refusing to watch this and let his wife rent it. This movie was a bunch of garbage. The movie was rated PG-13 for Sustained Intense War Sequences, Imanges of Wounded, Breif Sensuality and Some language. Some language. The actors/actress in this movie must have swear at least 50 times and that is not some lanuage. Pearl Harbor was bomed on the day of December 7, 1941. And 60 years after that this dumb movie was made. The movie starts on Disc 1 and the last 54 minutes are on Disc 2 (which I didn't expect). If you have read this review and found it helpul please vote. But If you have read this review and not found it helpful please don't vote. Did Hollywood think we needed this movie? I am glad that neither me or my parents was born or living on December 7, 1941. Please trust me and skip this movie because there are much better movies out there. Pearl Harbor was bomed by the Japenease. Which means me wonder what people of America did to the people of Japan that made them to decide to bomb Pearl Harbor. At the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was not one of the United States. Please do not view this movie. This movie really does deserve zero stars. This movie should not have been made in the first place. All copies of this movie should be destroyed. Or if not, locked in a castle of films to never be released, just as long as you stay away from this movie.

Rating:
Summary: Long, drawn out, and INCREDIBLY boring
Review: I don't mind a good love story being woven into a war epic, but this movie will test even a romantic's patience. It's got to be the most boring war movie I've ever seen. The director and writer were obviously trying to reproduce the success of "Titanic" in a different context but failed miserably. The actual Pearl Harbor invasion scenes are good, but you have to wait ONE AND A HALF HOURS for it. By then you'll wish the movie would just end and think back to the days when cruder special effects produced vastly superior war epics like "Tora! Tora! Tora!".

Rating:
Summary: Paradise lost
Review: All things considered, the Disney Co.'s "Pearl Harbor" -- the most expensive and perhaps most highly anticipated summer movie blockbuster wannabee-- could have been a lot worse.

For sure, it's no "Saving Private Ryan" that updates and expands the combat-movie genre and has something new to say about the horror and irony of mechanized warfare.

Moreover, as a detailed docudrama and chronicle of the infamous Japanese sneak attack that jarred us into World War II, it can't hold a candle to the epic 1970 Japanese-American co-production, "Tora! Tora! Tora!"

And as a searing personal drama about an ensemble of characters whose lives are caught up in the events of Dec. 7, 1941, it's a pale shadow of one of the most celebrated movies of all time: 1953's "From Here to Eternity."

Critics also will no doubt harp on its cliches -- visual and dialogue -- its chest-pounding patriotism and the manner in which it apes the "Titanic" formula by placing a dreamy love story in the midst of a spectacular nautical tragedy.

Still, the cast is engaging, the overall visual effects are tremendous and I found myself fairly swept away for most of the fast-moving, three-hour running time in a way I haven't been by most of the other overproduced Hollywood spectacles of recent years.

Based on an original script by Randall Wallace ("Braveheart"), the film tries to be a bit of both "Tora!" and "Eternity" by contrasting newsreel footage and docudrama re-creations of historical events with the personal story of two Army pilots in love with the same beautiful nurse.

Opening with a brief prologue establishing the childhood friendship of the buddies, the film cuts to 1941, when Rafe (a rakish Ben Affleck) falls in love with Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) just before leaving New York to go to England to fight in the Eagle volunteer squadron.

Shortly thereafter, Evelyn and Rafe's best friend, Danny (Hubba-Hubba heartthrob Josh Hartnett), are reassigned to the Pearl Harbor area and, when Rafe is shot down over the Atlantic and presumed dead, they console themselves by falling in love against their wills.

This setup -- intercut with numerous vignettes involving political and military leaders in Washington and Tokyo -- takes up the first 90 minutes of the film, and is followed by a show-stopping Pearl Harbor attack sequence that gobbles up close to 40 minutes of screen time.

Then, instead of ending on this depressing note, "Pearl Harbor" moves its heroes and their problems straight into the Doolittle raid on Tokyo and the whole last act becomes payback time for imperial Japan and a means of resolving the love triangle.

As it moves along, the love story becomes increasingly predictable and soap opera-ish, but it gets by on the appeal of its stars. Beckinsale and Hartnett are as irresistibly wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting, and even the cocky Affleck gradually wins us over.

The film definitely works as a spectacle as its budget was well over $100 million and actually top "Titanic" and "Gladiator" in the art of CGI.

Director Michael Bay, noted for the heavy-handedness of his previous collaborations with producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("The Rock," "Armageddon"), also has restrained his tendency to overplay every scene and goes for a doomed romantic wistfulness in the downtime that plays nicely off the razzle-dazzle of the rest of the picture. Bay's tendency to tooth-rattling sound mixes is indulged throughout, but his love of shamelessly heart-tugging montages doesn't really kick in until the moments immediately preceding the attack: small boys play baseball, a housewife hangs out laundry and, most egregiously, three beautiful little girls wearing homemade angel wings frolic in the woods as the whining Japanese planes darken the sky.

As a history lesson, the film is like the synopsis of the Cliffs Notes version of WWII. The complex cascade of social, political and military events leading up to the attack are sketched in the broadest possible way, often in terms of some achingly apocryphal dialogue, but we get the idea.

And some of the historical tableaux are both suspenseful and scary, especially the ones involving President Roosevelt (Jon Voight), which eerily communicate what a low-tech and generally clueless environment the diplomats and warriors of the world inhabited some 60 years ago.

Happily, the filmmakers also have resisted what must have been considerable pressure to rewrite history with a politically correct brush: the one black character (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is a cook, the dialogue is embarrassingly true to the period ("Take that, you Jap suckers!") and the Japanese are clearly the bad guys.

And if "Pearl Harbor" works only passably well as a love story and a history lesson, it definitely works as spectacle. The $100 million-plus worth of effects -- including huge mechanical sets, scale models and computer animation -- brings the tragedy of Pearl Harbor back to life with staggering power and intimacy.

Indeed, to my eye, this movie represents a big technological advance in the art of CGI over "Titanic" and even "Gladiator" -- both of which were littered with technical flaws and had numerous animated sequences that looked every bit as cartoonish as "Lady and the Tramp."

"Pearl Harbor" also has a few glaringly phony moments -- including the one in which we ride the falling bomb that sinks the USS Arizona. But only a few moments and, otherwise, this eye-filling movie is sobering evidence that the time is very near when the difference between what is real and what is computer-generated in movies will be imperceptible to the human eye.

Rating:
Summary: Pearl Harbor
Review: This movie has gotten a bad rap. I just saw it and it's very intense. They could have done away with the love story because it's simply the only boring part of the movie. The rest is complete mindblowing. The special effects are amazing and done in the most realistic way I've seen in a while. The only movie I could compare this to is TITANIC, which follows the same type of plotline, except Pearl Harbor is much more interesting and intense. The one other thing I would complain about on this box set is that you have to insert a second disc to watch the ending (might as well be on videotape or laserdisc).

Rating:
Summary: What is everyone complaining about??
Review: I finally sat down to watch this after someone let me borrow their DVD of it. My husband sneered everytime I wanted to rent it at the store, so I never got it, and he still hasn't seen it. Goodness, I am happy I watched it. I will gladly watch a good love story, and when it is Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett in it, that just doubles the fun. Being born past the time frame of the attack on Pearl Harbor and not being a war or history buff, I would like to think I learned something from the movie. Of course noone can ever totally depict everything accurately that happened during that attack, and we all know two people can see the exact same event, but their perception of it and later description of it will differ. So sure, take some of the movie with a grain of salt, realize this isn't an actual live documentary of the attack, but you still can't forget that many people died tragic, horrible deaths in PearlHarbor that day, and I in no way felt this movie trivialized that. I know people will groan, but this movie will always change the way I remember Dec 7th from now on, and I don't see how that can be a bad thing. And why does everyone want this movie to be all about the attack? The people who lived and worked around the Harbor had lives too and his just offers a glimpse of what it might have been like at that time. Bravo for an entertaining and patriotic movie!