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PEARL
HARBOR
review by Joseph B. Mauceri
REVIEW: I really, truly, honestly wanted to like this film. Unfortunately, it is so flawed that I almost hurt myself from the constant cringing. True, there are the cliched scenes -- the lover on the train platform, the streaming sunlight through the windows, the slow motion action sequences. That would be fine, after all the story takes place during the 1940's. However, there are numerous moments when Michael Bay does cliched Michael Bay moments. The opening sequence looks like it is right out his music video for Meat Loaf's "Objects in the Rearview Mirror," Doolittle and his men walking out from the hanger looks like a shot from "Armageddon," and action sequences feel like the re-staging of sequences from "The Rock." I was extremely disappointed by the film's inability to instill a sense of patriotism. In "Armageddon" Bay is able to take an unlikely bunch of heroes and make you feel that they risk their lives to overcome insurmountable odds to save the world. One would hope that PEARL HARBOR could do the same, but it doesn't obtain the same level. Once we've waited through all the romance and tragedy, we are smacked with the shocking visuals of the attack and the causalities. Anticlimactically, Bay presents the audience with the Doolittle mission. The audience is so emotionally drained at that point I don't believe they can respond as Bay and Bruckheimer would have hoped. Again, I don't mind the cliched images, but the screenwriter should have his Writers Guild card revoked for the horrendous dialogue. It is extremely flat, unintelligent and rolls off the lips of the talent to land some place below a 12th grade reading level. I personally wanted to take a match to Wallace's union card when Kate Beckinsale's character is trying to explain why she failed to inform Affleck of an important plot point upon his return and refers to the tragic events as "all this." The special effects sequences are impressive, yet they lacked a fresh prospective. There are certain key sequences, which are truly memorable. However, there are several sequences that are exploited so as to add filler to the battle. The most exploited are the planes running through a lane between two battleships. The problem with these big pictures is that Industrial Light and Magic ends up working on them. As a result, the films all take on this homogenized feel. In thinking about the planes flying between the battle ships, there is something about the staging that reminded me of the fighters in the trench scene in "Star Wars." Bay and Bruckheimer's PEARL HARBOR is a well intended piece of fictionalized history that does not live up to audience expectations. The film is flawed by uninspired dialogue, an anticlimactic ending and visuals that should have been done by an effects house that might have brought something different to the table. Given the somber nature of the film I feel it a bit awkward with the studio's labeling this as a "summer blockbuster." We should remind people of the scarifies that others have made to secure our freedom. However, should we have to pay $9.50 per person to do so? OFFICIAL
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SYNOPSIS:
To young boys, the son of a crop-duster and the the son of
a dirt farmer, grow up to be best friends and enlist to become fighter
pilots. Rafe falls in love, but still volunteers to fight with England
against the Germans, leaving his girl and best friend behind to
head for Hawaii. Rafe is shot down. They believe he is dead and
console each other, they fall in love and she becomes pregnant.
Rafe returns to a not-so-happy homecoming and all head breaks lose
- December 7, 1941.