It’s the end of February and I’ve decided to spice it up a bit. Back in January, I wanted to do a comparison of The Godfather Part 3 and it’s 2020 recut. I feel it’s appropriate now to talk about a great historical romantic drama and a bad historical romantic drama. With the success of Titanic, it sent a ripple among Hollywood that some movies had to include a romance angle, even if it didn’t call for it. Pearl Harbor is one of those films. It’s a second Michael Bay movie I’m talking about now. And boy let me tell you it’s bad.
1. Two Pilots and a Nurse
Right as the movie starts, I honestly thought that the movie would just be about two friends. We follow Rafe and Danny as they’re highly gifted pilots for the Army. These two are the closest best friends where one of them defends the other from their drunken father. Aside from that, we really don’t get to know them. Well, except for Rafe who sometimes says in his dialogue that he’s a pilot and that’s his entire life.
This is from the Michael Bay school of characters where the characters have little to no depth at all. As I mentioned earlier, Rafe’s whole life is predicated on just flying. It’s his pride and joy and when given the choice to fight in Europe. He does exactly that and we have moments where he engages the Nazi’s in aerial dogfights. Now, just reading that, what exactly does that moment have to do with Pearl Harbor?
I’ll get to that. I think, since there’s so much baggage that this movie has where I honestly think that watching it made me madder at it as a film. But I digress. We’re then introduced to Evelyn, alongside her fellow nurses as they’re transferred to Hawaii. Along the train ride, the new nurse tells her story on how she met Rafe. I think in one way, the film tried to do two things when she’s explaining the story. One is having her telling the story, and the other is when we’re shown that.
It tries to do the double duty, but I think it’s part of the film’s problem. Pacing is one of the film’s biggest problems. For one thing we don’t get a smooth transition when it comes to seeing what’s happening. We sort of just jump from one thing to another. Everything feels abrupt when we focus on the Japanese to the main characters. Like we have one scene when the enemy is planning the attack, then transition to a romance scene.
Compounding it is the overall runtime of the movie. Like, that whole moment when we follow Affleck’s character in Europe could’ve been cut. It’s inconsequential when it’s obvious that the main characters are going to see the actual attack. There’s so much padding in the film where it’s going about the laziest way to be an epic war film. Like with Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character, his whole story could’ve been an entirely different movie. It just feels shoehorned in to give the actual invasion gravitas. Or just making it more impactful.
Lastly, the whole romance in the movie doesn’t work at all. I can understand when one of the friends hooks up with the love interest, but it just feels a bit wonky. One thing to make it work is chemistry, and this movie is missing that. Having two male leads loving one woman could’ve been more impactful. Although, the dialogue just ruins all moments of relating to the characters and the level of intimacy we see. We have this juxtaposition of masculinity and romantic intimacy clash that it literally is the film’s ultimate flaw. It’s literally putting a cube in a round hole, but forcing it enough where it fits.
2. Historical Inaccuracy
The biggest sin for any historical film is to be completely inaccurate in terms of its subject matter and in the time of the event taking place. This movie is guilty of being associated with that. It’s obvious that it’s trying to be the masculine version of Titanic. With the backdrop of war and a friendship surviving an attack. Including the love interest who’s just there. I don’t mean to be misogynistic but that’s kind of how the film comes off to me. It would’ve been interesting to have a budding friendship nearly torn apart due to a woman and then come together as a way to stop the Japanese.
That’s one way the film could’ve been fixed. But the person who directed it was clearly so wrong for the role. Not to list the many historical problems since the official Pearl Harbor website listed some. And there’s more but I’ll leave it to that. The film treats the whole invasion as an unexpected attack. There’s no level of anxiety of something incoming when the characters are on the island. Like part of it feels boring since the characters don’t have that much depth to care.
Now we can talk about the actual bombing run. How it’s presented is an impressive feat of camera work and stunt work. But even with just how much explosions are shown when the Japanese bomb the battleships, it all just feels hollow. The way it’s shown is way too stylized and has that distinct Michael Bay flair to it. Especially when we have those moments when the regular civilians see the planes coming in.
The missed opportunity the movie has going for it was that it was rated PG-13. For such a turning point in World War 2, we see just a tamed version of how much is shown. Now, I don’t want to compare it with Saving Private Ryan due to superiority of the latter, but I’m going to. Ryan doesn’t shy away from the level of violence, but it wasn’t exaggerated. In this movie, it’s just eye candy seeing it and not having the sailors die gruesomely.
The whole movie could’ve been like a tension filled disaster movie. But it borders on action movie when we see the follow up retaliation attack on Japan. Even with me deciding what type of movie it could’ve been, it begs the question of why it was made. I can excuse any historical movie for being partly inaccurate. At least at the expense of telling the story and to shorten the actual event in the movie’s time. But I wouldn’t want a historical war movie be inaccurate to the point where it’s insulting to historians or veterans.
3. Overall
With all that, Pearl Harbor is bad. I felt insulted watching it and it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
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