Pearl Harbor (2001)

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Excellent, a Must See

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The Second World War is undoubtedly the conflict that cinema most portrayed. The movie list is almost inexhaustible but the good movies list is much smaller, and I don't know if "Pearl Harbor" can enter that list. Addressing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the main American military port in the Pacific at the time, the film has huge cons. Michael Bay tried to focus on realism, historical accuracy, romance (the lead story is a love triangle, in which two childhood friends engage the same girl) and special effects, trying to do something different and better than it's direct competitors, with whom it would inevitably be compared (for example, the enshrined "Tora Tora Tora" or the more recent "Saving Private Ryan").But despite all the hard work, the film exaggerates so much in everything that has lost quality. For example, the love story that links all events (ranging from the Battle of Britain to the Doolittle Raid) is so sappy and cliched that it seems to have been copied from a cheap novel or a soap opera. The film is so sugary that it was even compared to "Titanic" because of that. To make things worse, the characters are so poorly constructed that the audience never really cares about them. What interest does it have if that girl dates one of those guys, the two, or goes to a convent? Although they gained notoriety with this film, Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale were not able to shine at all and I think they will not carry good memories of this film. Other problems in the script are the "black-and-white" perspective of war and world, and the inability to portray facts outside the "canonical version" of the story: Americans are the good guys, who were quiet in their corner, japs are the bad guys who treacherously attacked that little Hawaiian paradise. Although the film shows that there was an imminent danger of an attack and that statement was discredited, it never shows the great interest that the US (and Roosevelt) really had in being attacked, in order to finally be able to fully justify the entering into a war that would make economy (still trying to get back up from the 1929 crash) make a lot of money. We know that there are even indications that the US provoked Japan in order to be attacked. The film ignores all this, preferring to portray American heroism, but historical accuracy shouldn't be limited to the choice of an airplane or paint for a ship, but must also (and mainly) be used in the way the story is told to the public. That didn't happen here.If the script is bad and very fragile, the film improves when we observe the technical questions. The special effects are good, the state of the art when the film was released, but they end up catching your attention so grandly that you stop believing what you see. You don't feel the danger, you know they will survive by a hair, threading the plane through a hole in a needle or by some other unbelievable way. Then you just watch and expect them to finish playing with the planes and blow things up. The soundtrack is forgettable, and the best are in fact a few hits from the Forties that were introduced in the film.

People these days are intellectually lazy and their understanding of history comes from movies, not from libraries. Pearl Harbor is not only inaccurate but it is an insult to those who died.If this were 100% fiction it would be a great movie. The thing that ruins it for me (and others of my generation who had relatives that died there) is that the actors were like children playing dress-up, who were working for producers, a writer, and a director whose understanding of things was sophomoric, juvenile, and artificial. There was virtually no research done on life, fashion, and sensibilities of the people of that era. The BS of the two pilots was wildly disrespectful to the two real-life pilots who responded during the attack, and to then pretend that these two fictional fighter guys would suddenly be flying bombers is both stupid and disrespectful to the real Tokyo raiders. If you want to see a good film on Pearl Harbor, watch Tora Tora Tora. Not only does it represent the truth, but it also shows things from both the American and Japanese sides. The film Pearl Harbor is just a popcorn movie. I certainly hope that viewers do not take the wild departures from the truth to represent history, because it doesn't.

The title is promising. but when you watch this movie oh my GOD they presence polyandry story. and they like to make it look ok . very bad romance story ever..I heard about this film while it was in production. I heard about how they were going to go out of their way to get all the right aircraft to film so things would look right. I heard how they wanted everything to look as authentic as possible. I heard that the movie would somehow encompass the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor, and the Doolittle Raid (??? - an early warning sign). I heard that they were going to stage the premiere on an aircraft carrier moored in Pearl Harbor, for an audience of Second World War veterans. They even managed to get one of the veterans attending the premiere to say complimentary things about the movie. I knew that special effects technology had advanced enormously since 1970, allowing the filming of things that would have been impossible in the previous big-budget movie about Pearl Harbor, Tora Tora Tora.

This is is not as historically accurate as Tora, Tora, Tora, it is a love story set in Pearl Harbor/Doolittle raid. Like all "dramatizations", there is poetic license to make the story more interesting. From a dramatic perspective it generates an emotional response. Is not that the purpose of art? The Last Supper by Da Vinci is not accurate to history, but it is not less art. Those who pick apart this story because of inaccuracies I am afraid are motivated by Michael Bay's politics. That is unfortunate.Remember, this was homage to the 60th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor and it was a tremendous effort and worth watching. To feel good about America and the spirit and dedication that made America great.BTW, to the reviewer that did not call the Doolittle raid a victory, needs to read the Two Ocean War by Samuel Eliot Morrison or "Blue Skies and Blood" by Edwin Hoyt or "Incredible Victory" by Walter Lord. The Doolittle raid made the victories at Coral Sea and Midway.What is ironic: Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack that was unprovoked and a catastrophe for the attacker in the end. About 4 months after this release America was again a victim of a sneak attack that killed about the same number of people as Pearl Harbor. A major difference with 9/11 is the 9/11 attack was televised real-time. The movie Pearl Harbor shows the emasculation that has taken place to the United States. Had Pearl Harbor been filmed real time, the Japanese race would be extinct today. The fact that Americans do not have the same resolve in 2001 is an interesting truth. Its rightness or wrongness will be judged in 2061 when they do movie about the WTC for its 60th anniversary of the attack.