Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, genius behind 'high concept' movie classics like Top Gun, Days Of Thunder, Con Air and Gone In 60 Seconds re-unites with Armageddon-director Michael Bay for Pearl Harbor: The Movie. As the title suggests, Pearl Harbor is about the Japanese attack on the US Naval base there in December 1941. Well, ostensibly at least. At three hours, three minutes running time, BraveHeart-scribe Randall Wallace tells a pretty sprawling tale. The first hour-and-a-half sets up the love-triangle between pilots, and best mates since they were kids, Rafe (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Hartnett). Rafe falls in love with the impossibly beautiful Evelyn, played by Brit-babe Kate Beckinsale.
As the Yanks are somewhat tardy when it comes to World Wars, Rafe gets bored of never getting to shoot anybody or blow stuff up, so he joins the beleagured RAF, who have by now been fighting the Germans for a couple of years. It's refreshing to see a slightly more honest representation of WWII than is usual in a Hollywood flick, ie them actually admitting that Britain was in it, let alone fighting a few years before the Americans got the stones to join in. Even if the miserable brits, on their rainy, cold island with their ramshackle planes are in awe of this handsome and amazing flying ace. When he gets shot down and goes MIA, in a rare moment of action during the first half, Evelyn gets it on with Danny.
Most movies only last ninety minutes, this one squanders that amount of time with a weak love story that could have been told in half an hour.It is as though, in the same way that Bruckheimer and Bay go to amazing excesses with their brilliant action set-pieces in movies like The Rock, they want to do the same with chick-flickery. So there is loads of gazing into each others' eyes and some of the most awful soppy dialogue you will ever have the misfortune to hear. Somehow it doesn't work though, you don't care about the characters or what happens to them. Tellingly, or perhaps because, you just cannot wait for the attack to begin. You've seen the trailer and you're there for one thing. The forty-minutes worth of Japanese offensive are fantastic. It feels like a completely different movie. The director is clearly on surer ground with stuff blowing up, dogfights, gunfire and people running round shouting. Stick to what you know. You can almost forget the arse-numbing first half with the flawless-CGI Zeros flying about and vast ships blowing up and sinking. Of course the movie still isn't over. You couldn't end a film like this with the Yanks roundly snottered. In the Jingoistic Section of the movie Danny and Rafe are sent off to bomb Tokyo amid much slo-mo flag-waving, cheesy God-bless-Americaing and misty eyed praise for the bravery of the young pilots. Yeah! Bomb those civilians! There's a really good movie in here, trying to get out. And if Pearl Harbor was edited down to a leaner ninety minutes,dispensing with all the crap at the start and the pointless, annoying sub-plot that wastes the talents of Cuba Goding Jnr it would rank along side The Rock and Con Air as another triumph for Bruckheimer. Unfortunately, it's a big, flabby, dull yawn of a movie with an entertaining middle. 4/10 |
