Pearl Harbor

(2001)
Books have been written about the distortion of history by Hollywood, and the authors have gone into a lot more depth than I will here. You can generally count on some fudging when you see almost any film based around a real life incident, because although real-life is plenty interesting, Hollywood feels the need to, well, Hollywood it up. Thus we are given Pearl Harbor, the latest film by Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay (oh, come on, it hardly matters who's in it. Anyone could have been in this film and it still would have had the B/B stamp on it). Released on Memorial Day ostensibly to honor the nation's servicemen (but in reality to take advantage of a three day gross), Pearl Harbor is, essentially, WW2 for the MTV generation. The story starts in 1926 (!!!) with buddies Rafe (what an annoying name) and Danny, young boys who love to fly. Fast forward a bunch of years and Maverick and Goose are -- oh, wait, wrong movie. But essentially, Pearl Harbor's first hour (of a long 150 minutes or so) rips straight from Top Gun. Rafe (Ben Affleck, doing the Tom Cruise role) is sent to England to be a part of Eagle Squadron, a special non-Brit section of the RAF made up of people whose countries are already beaten by or are too afraid to fight the Nazis (so the movie would have us believe. Everyone but Rafe has an English accent, though). Danny (Josh Hartnett, looking for all the world like a 25-year-old version of Tommy Lee Jones, pity he doesn't act it) ends up stationed on Hawaii with the rest of the cast, mostly made up of a bunch of nurses who wear their hair long in uniform, wear enough make-up to be showgirls, and are led by the abundantly pretty Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale). Of course, Kate and Rafe become an item before he is shipped off to England and she to Hawaii, and of course she falls in love with Danny once Rafe is reported dead, shot down by the Nazis (along with David Gilmour's dad, I bet). But the characters aren't the stars here, which is fortunate, because all of them are relatively wooden and none of them are terribly well-acted. Academy Award Winner Cuba Gooding Jr. shows up in an extended cameo as a cook, one Dorie Evans, but you know from the first second he shows up he was selected for ethnic diversity. They try to spin a thread of connection between he and Evelyn (hey, you've got two and a half hours. I'm thinking everyone has enough time to meet everyone here), but it doesn't make much sense. Alec Baldwin also pops up as hard-assed flight squadron leader General Doolittle, but apparently he confused this small role with his smashing walk-on in Glen Garry Glen Ross, where he steals the show in ten quick minutes from the likes of Pacino, Spacey, and Lemmon. Here, he doesn't even have any competition, and his gruff Robert Mitchum act is so thick it's almost comical. Jon Voight does his best to portray Roosevelt sympathetically, and with the make-up there is an eerie resemblance. But Voight gets the film's single biggest groaner scene of all (and there are more than a few), and even an actor of his caliber is wasted here (much like Sean Connery popping up in the last five minutes of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves). Again, luckily, the film is really about eye-popping special effects and planes doing unbelievable things rather than, say, people, war, or the horrors it inflicts. The entire bombing sequence of Pearl Harbor is breathtaking (until Rafe and Danny manage to get their planes up off the ground, and the two flyboys stick it to the Jap armada good!). Zeros and bombers arc crazily in the air, and we are presented with fabulously rendered digital shots of the American fleet, the Japanese attack force, everything. The dogfights here -- and especially the ones over Dover between the RAF and the Luftwaffe -- are eye-

popping, exciting, mile-a-second excitement. In an ironic turn, they recall nothing so much as the twisty-turny acrobatics of the ships in Star Wars, which was itself inspired by WW2 dogfight films. But the 40 minutes or so of the Japanese attack are top notch, just terrifically executed and very engaging. Sure, the filmmakers take liberties -- the Japanese attacked very early in the morning, and we are treated to all sorts of slices of American life uncharacteristically transpiring at 7 a.m. on a Sunday kids playing baseball, a woman hanging her wash, the highest ranking officer on the golf course, and so on. An early church service I could accept without a raised eyebrow, but ... anyway, again, visually stunning stuff. One of the film's major flaws, though, is that it doesn't end with the sinking of the Arizona and the day that will live in infamy speech. Because They are the dirty Japs and we are the Good Guy Americans, the movie has to end on a note where America can feel good about itself, and really, there's not much to feel good about in a single-sided ass-whooping that our own government knew was coming and didn't do a lot to prevent (and gee, that was left out of the movie, of course. This is Cinema Reagan, not the incisive political films of the '70's). So we are treated to an hour detailing the training and execution of the Doolittle raid -- which, you know, did happen, but did not have the dramatic or strategic impact the movie states it did. At all. But, again, waving the flag is more important than educating people. And nowhere is that more true than in the shabby treatment the Japanese are given in the film. Yes, they are the aggressors and yes, they shouldn't be presented heroically. But no single Japanese character is even given a name; they are all addressed by rank or by no title at all. The music in all of the Japanese sequences is dark, somber, and pretty much cues you in that "these are the villains, kids." Poor Mako -- veteran of a zillion films, too many to mention -- is given the thankless task of playing (I think it's supposed to be) Yamamoto. One is reminded of the much much better job that 1970's Tora! Tora! Tora! did in showing both sides of the attack, but then TTT did a much better job in every category except visual effects. Pearl Harbor is a history film for those who don't want to think a whole lot. It's visually pretty and again, the effects sequences are pretty damn neat, but the film has a bogus air of self-importance and a lack of gravitas. It's essentially Top Gun set in the '40's, an 80's film entirely, which is not a surprise coming from Bruckheimer and Bay. If you really want to see a well-done film about WW2, take Saving Private Ryan off the shelf and give it another spin. Now that's a story about WW2. This? This is fluff. June 2, 2001