(reviewed at the mecca on memorial day ((mon/tues may 27/28)) with stu + jack)
It was late July 1998 when Steven Spielberg’s epic WWII picture Saving Private Ryan hit theaters. While it didn’t win Best Picture that year (Harvey and Bob and the voters at the Academy should be institutionalized for three to seven years for that crime), it brought forth a new era of World War II remembrances. Society got Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation book, and films like The Thin Red Line, The Enemy at the Gates, Band of Brothers, U-571, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Wind Talkers, and Pearl Harbor got made. Earlier today prez Bush even announced that finally Washington D.C. would build a monument for all those that were lost in that terrible war in in the 1940’s.
World War II is chic. It’s popular. It’s hot. So what happens after a powerfully awesome film like Saving Private Ryan comes out. Easy. You look for the next target. SPR featured the infamous Battle of Normandy, France. The Thin Red Line did Guadalcanal. What’s a ‘cool’ and popular battle? Why, hell, what about the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Uh…wait a minute Mister Hollywood Producer. We lost that battle. And…and…it wasn’t really a battle at all. Those slant-eyed Japs came flying in, blew the shit out of us, and left us crying with blood and broken glass. Those Japs made us look like common fools! Who wants to see a movie about that?
Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckhiemer and Randall Wallace and Disney know who. And that’s why the latest $200 popcorn spectacle Pearl Harbor is showing in a bazillion screens to loathsome crowds (the crowd I saw it with seemed to loath it anyway…meaning they didn’t laugh at any of Alec Baldwin’s jokes and they didn’t clap like usual moviegoers). Saving Private Ryan showed the brutality and carnage of war that had never been shown before in World War II films. SPR was supposed to be serious enough to let us young kids that don’t know nothin’ realize that these guys died to protect the U.S. of A. SPR ushered in the call of heroism that rounded the world. SPR and the others that followed were supposed to be entertaining, yes, but also they wanted everyone living today that didn’t know what it was like back then to come to an agreement that those that fought and died and suffered deserve recognition. SPR ushered in a very positive notion of WWII vets speaking up and our generation of rioutous, out of control drunks listening.
Pearl Harbor ruins everything. Randall Wallace wrote the horrendously by the numbers script and Michael Bay directed while Bruckheimer produced. This telling of the Pearl Harbor bombing (which was supposedly done much better in the Oscar winning famous pic From Here to Eternity…a film that made famous kissing on the beach while waves splash up and over the skin) begins by introducing two cocky and charming hunk fly boys from somewhere with cornfields. Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett want to fly so of course they eventually become two spectacular fliers in WWII who both end up in Pearl Harbor during the bombing. The only story other than the bombing involves a nurse played by the downright h-o-t-t-i-e Kate Beckinsale who ends up falling in love with the high flyers. There are other air force dudes, but they are more or less cliches like the stutterer, the idiot, and the tough as nails old man played by Tom Sizemore. Jon Voight gives an authentic performance as FDR, and Dan Akroyd even gets the part of the ‘smart’ army intelligence dude who knew the japs were going to invade Pearl Harbor. As for the ENEMY…the Japanese are given a few scenes preparing for battle, which more or less makes this a revenge popcorn film.
The best aspect of this 3 hour and 3 minute disaster (in every sense of the word) is the actual bombing of Pearl Harbor. It doesn’t come fast enough (at least an hour and a half into the film…and what is really hilarious is that the real bombing was shorter than this film), but when it hits you better hold on tight. These battle scenes are nothing compared to SPR, but for the popcorn dollar they sure do deliver. The Japanese come in like an army of soldiers in the sky and start dropping bombs in the water and on the decks of the ships and firing shells. The explosions are big and the shots are loud and the special f/x are terrifically awesome, which makes me recant my theory about how f/x are ruining film (see The Mummy Returns and The Phantom Menace). There are a few f/x scenes where the camera follows a japanese plane as it swoops down between the billowing, black smoke and ships on fire and WOW…these scenes are some of the best f/x work I’ve ever seen. As we fly behind these planes it’s like we’re in a video game. Truly awesome.
The bombing eventually has to end, and while the movie should of as well, it drags on for another hour. Maybe the writer or producer didn’t want to let everyone go home on a down note. I mean, the United States basically had their pants down and got creamed like we did in ‘Nam. There are no popcorn films in existance where the good guys lose. So, because of this concept, the film drags on to the Dolittle mission of bombing Tokyo…which is strangely only warehouses. And guess who goes on the Dolittle mission? You guessed it, Frank Stallone. Oh, no, I mean the two high flyers themselves. And yes, Kate is down on the ground ready to burst into tears at any harm’s notice.
For my money, Pearl Harbor sucked more than an Asian whore during the rainy season. It was too long, too cheesy, too silly, too stupid, too sappy, too same old, too over the top, too All American pride-ish, and too plain bad. The characters are all likable heroes, and Kate pulls of an eye-candy performance of epic proportions, but the movie has Bay’s fingerprints all over it. This is the hack director who made Armageddon and The Rock. And while The Rock was entertaining, it wasn’t meant to be serious. Pearl Harbor is supposed to be serious, but it looks too much like a glossy Gap advertisement than a heroic war picture. The bombing, which lasts around forty-five minutes, is awesome stuff, but the hour before and after is some of the worst stuff ever put on film. Bay attempts to make this the most All-American film ever put into a projector. Kids playing baseballs. Thousands of sunsets. Trains billowing smoke. Hip jazz clubs. And to top it off, Bay adds many Hollywood hi-jink laughs to entertain the audience…and all of them are so uninspired they make Brenden Fraser’s jokes in The Mummy Returns look like Don Rickles one-liners.
Pearl Harbor has some good action scenes, but is a terrible film. It’s almost sad that Hollywood makes a serious war disaster and turns it into a tear jerker popcorn picture just to make money. People only go see this for the action scenes. Young kids don’t give eight shits about the serious side of war after this movie. They just want to hop in a plane and shoot some Japs after a hard night of drinking and laughs.
I kind of wish the Japs had bypassed the harbor and shot down this movie instead. *1/2
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