Pearl Harbor

Rating:
Summary: History comes alive in this unforgettable motion picture!
Review: Pearl Harbor graphically depicts the full-scale attack of the Japanese against Pearl Harbor on that fateful and historic day, December 7, 1941. This motion picture makes history come alive in a way that is unforgettable, and also gives a lot of background. Personally, I would classify it as a historical thriller and would reccomend it to anyone age 13 and up. Blends action, adventure, and history, resulting in an unforgettable must-see motion picture.

Rating:
Summary: A thoroughly well-made action-drama
Review: [...]Having watched it the first with the lowest possible expectations,I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed as much as to watch it again and again and again and again.This has got everything you could want in a movie: action, tears, romance, laughs, and unapologetic patriotic American fervor. Granted, it's not Tora Tora Tora or Saving Private Ryan(which I happen to enjoy both),it's not 100% historically accurate(but tell me which Hollywood movie about an historical event is?),and Michael Bay is no Steven Speilberg(well at least Mike didn't give us A.I.),but its still a solid,moving 1940's-style epic with great actors/actresses like Ben Affleck,Jon Voight,Josh Hartnett,Cuba Gooding Jr.,James King,and especially Kate Beckinsale who made me swoon with her talent and beauty,and made the cliched love story work somehow.The 40-minute Japanese war raid on Pearl Harbor is a terrifing scene to behold;especially when the Japs drop a bomb on the USS Arizona,crashes to the bottom of the ship,a cook is shocked and scared,and KA-BOOM,the Arizona is sunk!Other one is is where an innocent young nurse is killed by the Japs gunfire. While the movie isn't anti-war,it is not going to make people want to experience war anytime soon.[....]

Rating:
Summary: "Titanic" meets "Tora! Tora! Tora!" - and a few others
Review: "Titanic" meets "Tora! Tora! Tora!" early in "Pearl Harbor" - validating the comments of other reviewers about this film exploiting cliches and past cinematic successes. As this grafting of epic romance onto dramatised history approaches its expected conclusion and the unsuspecting audience senses the end credits, the film launches into a reprise of "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo".
"Pearl Harbor" is a formula movie in which new ideas are hard to find, but who cares? It is very entertaining and well-made. Its tribute to the spirit of the times is largely satisfying. It has a good cast, with the biggest names in supporting roles, including Jon Voight's portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Alec Baldwin's of Lt Colonel Doolittle, and Dan Aykroyd's of a US Navy codebreaker. Clever market-orientated art direction and design give it a period look extending to 1940s-style brassieres-but perhaps shying clear of alienating modern tastes by going all the way with 1940s hair styles.
Bonus materials in the DVD package include a "making of" documentary with insights into the state-of-the-art stunts and special effects. Among the most impressive special effects is a convincing integration of computer graphics with the actual location of Pearl Harbor and with real sets, ships and aircraft. Modern buildings are edited out frame-by-frame. The "making of" documentary shows just how life-like computer-generated people, aircraft and ships have become. The image and Dolby 5.1 sound quality are as sharp as we now should expect from every new DVD release.

Rating:
Summary: Forget It.
Review: You can forget this one. I don't think there's been such a huge waste of production money since WATERWORLD and HEAVEN'S GATE. How anyone could take an event as monumental as Pearl Harbor and turn it into a slow, simpering, dreary soap opera is a mystery to me. The thing is sanitized and politically correct beyond belief--it's 1941 and nobody smokes! Cuba Gooding does his by-now-standard walkon as the heroic black guy held down by the white system, the women come across like California career valley girls in 1940s nurses' uniforms, and Josh Harnett does so much sad-eyed puppy dog whining that you're actually relieved when he gets killed off in the end (don't worry--knowing that won't ruin this turkey for you, I promise). But the biggest irritant is Ben Affleck. If there's a more annoying, artificial leading man around today, I don't know who it is. He manages to project a self-absorbed inner weakness and lack of character even as he's jutting his sculptured jaw and doing his John Wayne imitation. And in this stupid flick, he's HERE, he's THERE, he's EVERYWHERE! He's a fighter pilot who goes off to join the Eagle Squadron and fly Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. He gets shot down. Then he ends up in Pearl Harbor flying P-40s for the Army Air Corps. Then he mysteriously ends up transferred to B-25 bombers for emergency duty with Jimmy Doolittle for his famous Tokyo raid. What--there weren't enough qualified bomber pilots already trained to fly this important mission, they had to re-train fighter pilots Affleck and whimper-boy Hartnett to get the job done? Ridiculous. Slow, ponderous, boring, poorly written, and burdened with special effects (when something finally, actually does happen) that seem far too sci-fi for a WWII tale, PEARL HARBOR is a complete and utter failure. You want to see the definitive story of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, rent 1970's TORA TORA TORA. Now there is a fantastic movie about Pearl Harbor.

Rating:
Summary: Awful
Review: This movie is absolutely AWFUL. There was not a SINGLE redeeming quality about this film. Normally, if there's a few good explosions or a battle scene, then it usually can save a movie from the trashheap. It is THAT BAD when I can honestly say that the action did NOTHING to save this film.

Torture. If you are sado masochistic then this is the movie for you.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money for this DVD
Review: Let me start by asking you a question. When DVD's came out, weren't you happy that a long movie like 'Titanic' would be able to fit on one DVD and not split into two discs like on video? I'm sure you would answer yes, so that begs the question, what is the purpose of splitting 'Pearl Harbor' onto 2 DVD's? It is stupid if you ask me. That is the only reason why I gave this 1 star rather than 3.

The movie itself was ok. The special effects were good, but you could tell that they were special effects, and that always detracts from my enjoyment of a film. I thought the story was really two movies in one, a love story and a war story. Each one would have been great on its own, but mixed together they just make for a long movie. I also thought that Ben Affleck was not that good, and over acted for most if not all of the film.

I would not suggest buying this DVD because the film is split onto two disks, and the movie was not that great. Hope this helps you stay away from this purchase.

Rating:
Summary: This movie is a joke...
Review: This film sickened me. How can Micheal Bay look himself in the mirror after this travesty of film making? How can one take an important pivotal event in U.S. history and reduce it to a routine soap opera? This movie shows a complete lack of respect for Americans who died defending this country.
Look, Mr. Bay, if you are going to bombard us with 1 3/4 hours of love story under the guise of "Pearl Harbor" you could have at least made it interesting or original. Instead, the producers/directors show us all how completely bankrupt they are for fresh ideas and shove a Titanic clone on us. It's not even a good clone. Dreary acting and cliche after cliche litter this film. It would have been more tolerable had they hired some good actors with some screen presence. Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett? Fighter pilots? You have got to be kidding. They both look like they should be waiting on tables at a Hollywood restaurant. To add futher insult, the movie goes out of it's way to shove Ben Affleck in your face with an impossible amount of heroic feats. He shoots down Japanese fighers, he shoots down German fighters, he bombs Japan, he pulls wounded sailors from the water, he stops to give blood, crash lands twice, guns down Japanese soldiers while outnumbered, etc etc etc... Wow, all that and no Congresional Medal of Honor? We sure could use Ben in Iraq right now. The entire 4th Armored Division could pull out entirely with Ben Affleck there to save the day.
Aside from Superman Affleck there's more fiction present in this movie than you would find in a Stephen King novel. Why is nobody in the entire film smoking? They smoked like factories in the forties. Why were the Japanese portrayed as solemn and quiet as they prepared and carried out the attack? In reality, they were confident going in and jubilant at the outcome. The CGI Japanese Zeros are way too fast and make impossible manuevers. Since when could a soldier who stutters possibly make it to the Air Force? And I'm sure any pilot could just grab a plane and take his girlfriend for a ride whenever he felt like it. Kids out playing baseball and a woman doing her laundry at that hour in the morning, on a Sunday?? The Air Force got two planes in the air by storming out of a hangar? Jeez, why not just have Harry Potter swoop down with a broom and shoot down some zeros. It would have been just as accurate. On and on and on. I could go on all day with the historical inaccuracies. I understand Hollywood's desire to make a movie more "entertaining" by taking liberties with history, but they go way too far.
I noticed quite a few 5 star ratings for this movie. My take is that many of these people don't get out much. There are plenty of movies out there with good love stories with great acting that deserve 5 stars. There are also some really good war movies that are deserving of 5 stars. How can anyone give this train-wreck of a film five stars?
Please, Michael Bay, stop making movies.

Rating:
Summary: much better than i expected
Review: i could take or leave the love story. it didn't add much to my enjoyment, yet it wasn't as painfully ludicrous as many other films are. so, if you're into love stories, this isn't the worst one out there.

But, if you're like me, you'll want to know about the battle scenes. I didn't know much about Pearl Harbor before seeing this movie.. and i think this is the best introduction to it that is out there. Michael Bay, normally the antithesis of everything i love about movies, has given us a painstakingly detailed re-enactment of the events of Pearl Harbor. This is some of the most realistic action i've ever seen in a film.. and after watching the included History Channel spot, it seems to be pretty accurate as well.

Maybe it's just because i grew up on horror movies and cop shows, but when i was told in school about the 3,000 people that died at Pearl Harbor, my mind saw a mass of faceless soldiers dying without much of a fight... a simple fast bombing and a few thousand dead soldiers in the wake.

This movie not only put faces to those soldiers, but it illustrates, as perfectly as a film can, the courage with which those soldiers fought back, against all odds, against their assailants. I learned that the leader of the Japanese flight squad later recorded in his journal that he was shocked to see in front of him a single marine standing alone and emptying a clip from his .45 into his airplane.

It sounds simple, but imagine 6,000 soldiers fighting like that with little to no chance for survival.. many of them could've run, hidden, and lived, but they didn't.

So, i guess what i'm saying is that this is a good way to introduce yourself to a subject you may not know as much about as you thought you did. Or if you are familiar with it, you should still see it, because i don't think a better re-enactment has been or even could be done.

Rating:
Summary: Ppppplllllleeeeaaassee
Review: When I saw it at the theater with a group of other middle aged friends, I enjoyed it; but watching it again alone in my living room, I felt like, why bother?? Being with my friends the first time gave me the opportunity to voyeour their watching it.

While some of the characters and events in the film are true, the love story aspect was just too sappy. Give me a break. Danny dies and Raf gets the girl, the baby and the happily ever after.

The love story really distracted from the story line. Special effects were good, though, as well as the music. I bought the soundtrack hoping to relive some of the 40s magic, but it was mostly orchestral with just that one song by Faith Hill. I had to find another CD with classic 40s music to enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Pearl Harbor: War and Love
Review: Pearl Harbor was a movie that caught my attention for a long time. Ever since I first heard of it, and since the first time I heard of that white boy, Josh Harnett, I haven't stopped hearing about those two. Pearl Harbor literally exposed Josh Harnett to the public eye, so I obviosly thought this movie was something to watch.

I must say the movie sets were awesome, and all the battles were perfectly arranged so it would look extremely real. But what got my attention the most is that the movie is "not another war movie", it is more than that. I must confess it almost brought tears to my eyes, and I must say that it's hard to catch me crying during a movie (and no, I'm not considering myself a super-macho-man...it's the truth). My personal oppinion is that this movie uses the context of the Pearl Harbor battle as a secondary plot to cover the main one, which is the love triangle represented by Harnett's, Affleck's and Beckingsale's characters. I can say this movie makes you think a lot......would you or wouldn't you fall in love with your best friend's girl if he dies?? Would this be something to feel ashamed of?? I think this movie really shows what true friendships are about...they're all about giving your life to save the one person who has always supported you since you were little.

The DVD version of the movie takes you behind the scenes of the movie, and also lets you watch the great vide for "There You'll Be" by Faith Hill. I recommend you to buy this movie if you're not bothered by long films and/or romantic movies masked as war movies, and of course, it's a top buy if you have a Home Theater Entertainment System like the one I've got at home!