EXCELLENT!! long but worth it!

Director Michael Bay (ARMAGEDDON, THE ROCK) uses a tragic romantic triangle to set the stage for the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in this epic tale of love, loss, and patriotism. When Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale), a beautiful Navy nurse, meets dashing ace Army fighter pilot Rafe (Ben Affleck), the two fall madly in love, only to be separated abruptly when he is called upon to help fight the war in Europe. Unforeseen circumstances lead Evelyn into the arms of Danny (Josh Hartnett), another fighter pilot and Rafe's best friend since childhood. In the meantime, the Japanese military is planning the surprise early morning raid on Hawaii that will pull the United States into World War II. Spectacular special effects vividly recreate the attack in devastating detail as bombs explode, torpedoes shoot through the water, and bullets fly, shaking tranquil Pearl Harbor to its core. Bay deftly captures the patriotism and the loss of innocence of the young men and women who were suddenly thrust into the war. Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jon Voight, Alec Baldwin and Mako also star in this tribute to both the fallen and the survivors of one of the most horrific tragedies ever to occur on American soil.

Slobbering Romance About Deadly Serious US History

I can't imagine what on Earth director Michael Bay had in mind when he made a dripping romance out of the most tragic WWII attack on us soil in the 20th century: Pearl Harbor. For one hour + his audience was forced to slumber through a sickening tryst between two best buddy pilots and a Navy nurse. This didn't even make for decent television drama, let alone worthy of the silver screen. What a disappointment and waste of 3 hours!

There were a total of 10 minutes of actual visually performed patriotism led by Alec Baldwin, who must have been desperate to play in a role that was way beneath him. Ben Affleck plays an ego-maniac pilot who wants to fight for the British just to be in a plane he's so self-centered and eager for war.

What was noted as "Spectacular special effects vividly recreat[ing]the attack in devastating detail as bombs explode, torpedoes shoot through the water, and bullets fly, shaking tranquil Pearl Harbor to its core," is nothing but computer technology of the most rudimentary kind. It was nothing but human carnage. Perhaps this is a manly man's movie made for the likes of those who enjoy Braveheart, Titanic, The Flight of 93, The Passion of the Christ, 9/11, and other such ultra-boring block-buster drivel.

Definitely for those who don't care about history, and prefer their tragedies to be soft padded with straight sex and drippy romance. Not recomended for children due to overt heterosexual situations and graphic, if not brute, violence.

Yes. but it may hurt.

Pearl Harbor will appeal to many with its big names, its schmaltzy and contrived love story, its special effects for their own sake and its simplistic appeals to patriotism, morality and retaliatory violence. Yet the reality is that its just another installment in Hollywood's ongoing butchery of history for its own corporate ends: film-makers who use events like the bombing of Pearl Harbor want to exploit its sentiment but feel no duty to do it justice historically. The tepid disclaimer offered by its makers - that this movie is actually a 'love story' and not a docu-drama - should be swallowed by no-one (why then call the movie "Pearl Harbor" and not "Hearts across Oahu"?) The disappointing outcome of this misrepresentation is that many, if not most will leave the cinemas or turn off the DVD and think "So, that was what it was all about..!" Actually, it was probably nothing like this.

The movie goes for about three hours when less than two would have sufficed, and the surplus length can be attributed to both prolonged scenes of the bombing raid on Pearl Harbor itself, and the set-up of perhaps the most pointless and pitiful love triangle in cinematic history. Beckinsale, Affleck and Hartnett tango around each other for far too long, combining disinterested looks with utterly ridiculous platitudes and emotional observations (in fact the whole screenplay for this movie ranges from mediocre to utterly atrocious). Inserting a love story into an epic war movie is tantamount to breast enhancement surgery: get it wrong and the whole package will look utterly ridiculous - and this one was done by a butcher, not a master surgeon. Perhaps the screen writing budget was instead spent on the special effects and bombing scenes, which were too long and offered nothing except a half-hour of noise, cacophony and flying things. It added no meaning or redemption to the film - and by this stage it was craving for it, after the romantic interludes.

Of course every Hollywood blockbuster needs absolution and resolution, so there's some of that. Cuba Gooding Jnr. plays a black USN cook who, in the heat of battle, mans a gun and shoots some Jap planes, despite being racially excluded from such duties (those canny Afro-Americans, they're always fighting for rather than against their oppressors). Alec Baldwin plays an Army officer who leads a token retaliatory raid on Tokyo four months after Pearl Harbor. Jon Voight does a good job of looking and sounding vaguely like FDR, so full of vigor that he at one stage jumps up out of his wheelchair. Even the Japanese who plan and lead the Pearl Harbour attack, when hearing of its success, seem aware that their actions have doomed them to inevitable defeat. It's all enough to gladden the heart of the most retrospectively-patriotic American. A shame though that reality and patriotism don't make good bedfellows, and that this appalling movie is a simple-minded sideshow that doesn't honor the Pearl Harbor dead, it downright embarrasses them.

What a great collector's set~BUT...movie isn't great

This bloated, overblown, tediously overlong, hilariously cheesy 'Titanic' wannabe showcases plenty of expertise in the visual effects department and nothing but laughable bombast everywhere else. 'Titanic' worked because James Cameron knew how to find the balance between fictional, old-fashioned cornball romance and a devastatingly true-life disaster. The sinking of the ship was not just a stunning achievement technically but also truly emotionally draining. Cameron had respect for his subject matter.

This monstrosity, on the other hand, is a disrespectful, clueless chump of a movie that plays like Bay thought he'd been far too restrained on 'Armageddon'. The bombing sequence is full of headless, armless and legless corpses, drooling shots of soldiers getting blown up, lovingly composed shots of torpedoes heading towards their targets, and a detailed succession of explosions, bullet hits and crashing planes so endless that I got the feeling that, rather than wanting us to realise the horror of the attack, Bay just can't leave anything unseen. It's warnography of the worst kind.

As for the screenplay, put a peg on your nose. Every line of dialogue is either a pompous pronouncement, a howlingly clichéd clanger, a hindsighted historical prediction, or what seems like the beginning of a momentous speech. Seriously, how were the crew not chewing their jumpers in an attempt to hide their laughter? Josh Hartnett's okay though, and likable for the first time, while Ben Affleck embarrasses himself, Kate Beckinsale does herself no favours as she climbs another rung on the Hollywood ladder, and decent actors like Jon Voight, Alec Baldwin, Dan Aykroyd, Tom Sizemore and Jennifer Garner are wasted in varying levels of blathering idiocy.

Meantime, Hans Zimmer's score blasts us into submission, coating every vaguely patriotic, heroic or romantic moment with music so glutinous that it's like being held down while someone pours a bucketful of golden syrup into your face. In fact, uber-hack Bay overplays the entire thing, using every manipulative technique at his disposal, from slo-mo to quiet sound with 'moving' music to at least a billion million shots of people looking up at planes. This movie is a whole new kind of bad, and it makes '1941' look like a straight-faced docudrama.

Two for One

You'd think getting two movies for the price of one would be good. Unfortunately, in telling truncated versions of TORA,TORA,TORA and THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO, PEARL HARBOR strains your suspension of disbelief.
Why? Because it wants to follow one group of pilots and nurses from pre-war days through Doolittle's Raid. Aside from the fact they were unlikely to have all been sent to Hawaii, it really further strains credibility by having Doolittle draft all the fighter pilots to fly the bombers on his raid.
Better to have left out the "human" story altogether.
But watch it for the CGI imagining of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the incredible performance of Jon Voight, and the recreation of Doolittle's Raid. Even ignoring Ben Afflec and Josh Harnett, you'll still get your money's worth.