Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor, according to Michael Bay.

Pearl Harbor is loud, dumb, inaccurate, and ultimately dishonest and immoral. On top of that, it isn’t even altogether well-made. I walked into Pearl Harbor knowing more about the event than the movie did, and due to the continuous bad acting, lousy dialogue, and mind-numbing action sequences, I ended up walking out knowing less. It is quite possibly the worst movie that I have ever seen, and this is a sentence written by someone who has survived Highlander 2, Heaven’s Gate, Hercules Goes Bananas, and Jesse Franco.

The “film’s” director, Michael Bay, has gained infamy for making clichéd action movies that play up the violence and one-dimensional characters. Movies like Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, Armageddon, and The Rock gave us characters who reveled in shooting at each other while spouting wisecracks, while the heavy-metal rock soundtrack competed with the explosions to see who could deafen the audience the most. These films are trash, to be sure, with varying degrees of entertainment value. They are almost forgivable because Bay wasn’t trying to make anything beyond “popcorn flicks” for a young generation of movie goers who think it is funny to watch two grown men threaten to rape and shoot a young man who is dating one of their daughters (that was in Bad Boys II, in case it does sound funny to you; if so, why are you still reading this review?). With these movies, Bay established himself as an “action-genre” director, and while I personally don’t care for today’s ultra-violent, sexploitation action fests, I was willing to respect Bay on his own terms and keep him at an arm’s length.

But with Pearl Harbor, Bay has crossed the line of offensive filmmaking. What makes this film truly distasteful is that Bay is attempting to make a “real” film about a serious event in which thousands of innocent people were killed, and he uses the same methods that he used in his previous action entries. We have a painfully-written love triangle between two pilots and a nurse (Ben Affleck, Josh Harnett, and Kate Beckinsale) that occupies two-thirds of the film: Every line of dialogue and every turn of events are predictable and patterned after dozens of other movies that came before it (and did a better job with the material). Consider, for example, the scene in which Affleck must pass an eye exam before he can join the air force. He flirts with the cute nurse (Beckinsale) administering the test with his confident, square-jawed grin. He fails the test, but he cites that it is because he “has trouble reading, not seeing.” She of course takes his word for it and passes him, which is preposterous considering the consequences of such actions if he ever got into a plane and ended up putting the rest of his squadron in jeopardy (which would have made a much better movie). Of course, this subplot is never brought up again, and for the rest of the film, Affleck and his reading abilities function quite normally, and we realize that we have been given this scene just to give us implausible character development. Scenes like this happen for most of the film’s three-hour running length, and they are difficult to sit though and take seriously, especially when we are given dialogue like,

          Man: "You're so beautiful it hurts."
          Girl: "I think it's your nose."
          Man: "I think it's my heart."

and,

Soldier during attack: "I think World War II just started!" (Very humerous indeed, considering World War II had already been going on over in Europe for around half a decade and in China for even longer.)

If Pearl Harbor had only been guilty of a lousy, recycled romance plot and atricious dialogue, I would give the film a poor review, but could have at least recommended it on the basis of being unintentionally hilarious. The other one-third of the film is where things get truly offensive. As you might have already predicted, these three characters all end up in Pearl Harbor, where they witness the bombing of soldiers and ships that we have never met or established as anything other than background for these three’s would-be soap opera. The attack sequences are very well shot, but they are given the Bay touch of cuts so quick that we can’t tell what is happening or when. When images do slow down, it is to show American soldiers running in slow motion while their ships and buildings explode behind them and the Japanese bombers zoom to and fro above them. All of these action scenes are shown with a rip-roaring soundtrack and utilizing terrific special effects, but really, what is the point of it all? We haven’t invested in any of these characters who are dying, and I for one don’t want to watch the attack of Pearl Harbor being treated like a typical action movie. How do we honor the deaths of thousands of soldiers by turning their sacrifice into Rambo-like scenes that glorify violence? At one point, a soldier (played by Tom Sizemore) even spits a wad of tobacco from his mouth and attempts to shoot at oncoming Japanese planes with a sawed-off shot gun. Enough said.

Nearly as offensive is what happens after the attack: After events settle down, the badly-written love triangle plot continues throughout the rest of the film, as if the attack hadn’t happened at all. In the meantime, our heroes also participate in Doolittle’s air raid over Tokyo. It is given a similar action-fest treatment as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, proving at least that Bay isn’t partial to which side suffers tragic loss as long as there are plenty of explosions in the meantime.

Bay also doesn’t concern himself with getting historical facts correctly, as long as the images on the screen look good. The Japanese planes fly into Pearl Harbor to a mid-day sun, over a group of all-white children playing baseball and mothers hanging up laundry. Funny, considering the attack happened early in the morning on a Sunday, when most people would either still be asleep or getting ready for church. A decision was also made not to have any of the characters smoke, even though it was very common during war-time, and nearly everyone smoked. Evidently, Bay is more interesting in presenting contemporary heroes instead of realistic people true to the times. Hawaii natives are also mysteriously missing from the film. The list goes on, but I won’t bother. I understand the need for dramatic license when making movies, but Bay creates a setting that has little relation to Pearl Harbor at all.

Let me use an example to show exactly how distastefully Bay has desecrated the memory of Pearl Harbor: Imagine, several years from now, a major studio releasing a movie about the terribly tragedy at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. However, instead of focusing on the actual events and the human lives that it touched, the director takes the approach of an action movie which glamorizes the deaths of thousands of people in some scenes showing bodies falling from the crumbling buildings in slow motion. As the helpless victim plummet to their deaths, the soundtrack soars with excitement. These scenes, which take place in a desolate winter-environment to add artistically to the harshness of the setting, only take up one-third of the film. The rest of the movie focuses on a badly-written fictional love story that has nothing to do with the event. This main plot not only sugarcoats and romanticizes the World Trade Tower attacks, but by focusing on the love story, the director suggests that it is a more important topic to cover for most of the film than the event which it is supposed to be honoring. In fact, if you took the World Trade Towers out of the film, you’d still have a two hour-plus film featuring a painfully-written romance.

Thus is the nature of Pearl Harbor, the movie. It doesn't honor the tragedy of sixty years ago. It desensitizes people to its horror and rapes its impact on the nation. This is a film spitting on the honor of the people who were killed on that terrible day, and I can’t think of a single reason to recommend it. I also can’t understand why anyone in their right minds would want to see it, or how any Hollywood bigwig could have allowed it to get past pre-production stage. I am not the type of person who has bought into all of this “Anti-American” mumbo-jumbo that has swept over the nation of late, thinking that every word spoken should be pro-war and supportive of our current state of the union. I do know, however, that any event that led to the slaughter of thousands of innocent victims deserves better treatment than what Michael Bay and writer Randall Wallace have presented in their version of Pearl Harbor. They have created possibly the most anti-American film ever made. No, worse than that. It is anti-humanity.

Cast:
Captain Rafe McCawley: Ben Affleck
Captain Danny Walker: Josh Harnett
Nurse Lt. Evelyn Johnson: Kate Beckinsale
Petty Officer Dorie Miller: Cuba Gooding, Jr.
Sergeant Earl Sistern: Tom Sizemore
President Franklin Roosevent: John Voit
Lt. Col. James Doolittle: Alec Baldwin

A Touchstone Pictures release. Directed by Michael Bay. Written by Randall Wallace. Running time: 184 minutes. Rated PG-13, for language, a sexual encounter, and intense images of war and all sorts of innocent people exploding in slow motion. Original United States theatrical release date: May 25, 2001.