Pearl Harbor [2001]

Review

I just sat through all 183 loooong minutes of "Pearl Harbor", and the first thing that comes to mind is: "So, what, exactly, is left for the Director's Cut"?

The average film script totals somewhere in the area of 110 pages and typically translates into a 3 hour rough cut, which must then be trimmed to a comfortable, studio-contracted 2 hour running time. I can only imagine that Randall Wallace's shooting draft must've equaled the length of all 11 unexpurgated volumes of James George Frazer's "The Golden Bough"--that, or, sensing heat from the threat of a Writers' Guild strike, Bruckheimer and Bay acquiesced and put every word up on the screen.

The actual Japanese attack on the Hawaiian military base (7:55 AM, Dec. 7, 1941) lasted two hours. Well, it takes almost as long--an hour and a half--before we get to the titular incident in Bay/Bruckheimer's gorgeously designed but sloppily conceived, politically-correct schizoid treacle-fest.

I'm not one to bash a film on its faithfulness to facts (or usually, lack thereof), budget, or promotional tactics. Fudging the facts has long been a dramatic convention dating back to Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" (and well before that), so as long as a film about WW2 doesn't climax with a lasergun battle, I'm inclined to accept just about anything as long as it's convincingly done. Ask anyone who works in the industry and they'll tell you that movies--even those considered "low budget"--have always been too expensive to simply produce and dump into a theatre hoping it will find its desired audienced. Thus, "hype"--yes, the dreaded word--is a necessary evil, and I have no problem with gazillions of dollars being spent on a production if the money is up on the screen. If I directed a $135 M feature film, you can bet I'd be wearing a sandwich board with the title on it front and back in fluorescent paint and I'd be parading up and down Yonge Street in the rain if I thought it'd help pull one more body into the bijou. My problems with "Pearl Harbor" are concerned fairly and squarely with what unfolded after the Touchstone logo and just before the Faith Hill ballad.

Those who (like me) have thrilled to Michael Bay's critically reviled (but damned enjoyable) action opuses will be surprised at how corny and stiff "Pearl Harbor" is as an experience. All those Norman Rockwell-influenced inserts after Harry Stamper saves the Earth now play as an omen of what was to come. All this thing needs are some songs and it'd be an Elvis movie. We get not one, but two saccharine romances. Sheesh--there's even a sensitive stutter-er. All that's missing is the funny kid with the backward hat who can wriggle his ears and who drives a hot rod. And for what must be a war-film first, the doe-eyed newlywed who gets killed in combat is the bride, and not the soldier.

All of the film's top-drawer art direction and meticulous period detail did nothing to convince me that I was seeing was real. Save for the stunning FX work, not a single non-digital moment rang true--I saw contemporary actors dressing up and affecting mannerisms just to replicate what they though was the behavior of the era culled from old late-night movies.

I'd expected better material from the screenwriter, as Randall Wallace had once successfully combined (loose) historical facts and rousing battlefield action with Mel Gibson's "Braveheart". I should have remembered that Wallace had also been responsible for the plastic and unconvincing "The Man In The Iron Mask" remake with Leonard DiCaprio and a flatulent Gerard Depardieu. Now, it's unfair to review a film on the grounds of the story that WASN'T told, but wouldn't the Ben Affleck subplot have made for a more involving, exciting movie?

Think about it: Young Yankee pilot hotshot Rafe McCawley leaves his best friend and girl behind to join the Eagles in Britain. Joining a battered squadron of Allies, he battles the the Nazis in Europe, is shot down, presumed dead, and rescued by the French. Rafe then returns to the U.S., just in time to join in on the climactic battle of Pearl Harbor. Many die, young lovers are reunited, America joins the war effort. Roll credits.

Alec Baldwin is outstandingly dreadful... his glassy, star-spangled dementia like something out of Marvel Comics

Instead, the Japanese attack Hawaii in the MIDDLE of the film (take THAT, Syd Field!), and the last act degenerates into a tacked-on, hoary "Baa Baa Black Sheep" episode--a "revenge" raid on some Tokyo factories (because ending the film with Hiroshima was apparently considered "too tacky")-- that's as anticlimactic as it is suggestive of the worst of early Tony Scott.

Alec Baldwin is outstandingly dreadful as Col. James Doolittle, his glassy, star-spangled dementia like something out of a double-spread splash-page of Marvel Comics' "Sgt. Fury And His Howling Commandos". Right after Doolittle's howler of a speech extolling the virtues of volunteerism, I expected Baldwin to turn to the camera and order us all to buy bonds.

The rest of the cast fares better. Hunks du jour Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are fine enough, if nearly interchangeable, as boyhood pals who become wartime rivals, as is Kate Beckinsdale as the fiesty nurse who comes between them. In all fairness, none of them are given much to do than fill out pretty costumes against the production design and/or gaze off pensively into the omnipresent magic-hour light. Canadians Dan Aykroyd, Colme Feore, and Kim Coates perform the necessary exposition-drone roles. Jon Voight's FDR is little more than an SCTV caricature, but his delivery of the timeless "day that will live in infamy" speech is still rousing despite the nonsense that surrounds it. As for Cuba Gooding Jr.--no one does stoic dignity like this Oscar® winner, but what is his character doing in this film at all?

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As expected from the House Of Bruckheimer, FX, cinematography, and music credits are all superb. Bruckheimer and Bay have mustered up the veneer of 21st century David Lean, but what's they've got going on under the hood is so self-consciously orchestrated to avoid controversy, invite "respectability", and appeal to the widest-possible demographic that it exists for no other reason than to provide trailer images for something that promised to be far more compelling. Obviously modeled on James Cameron's "Titanic", "Pearl Harbor" fails to capture that insanely--popular (deservedly, IMHO) film's unforced sincerity and sense of (then) risk.

"Pearl Harbor" is the popular whipping post of the summer movie season so far--and predictably so. Bruckheimer and Bay could well deliver the next "Lawrence Of Arabia", but will likely never get the critical kudos for it. They're too populist in their tastes, and too rich to be regarded as "serious" artists. I really wanted to champion this movie, but the sad reality is that I found "Pearl Harbor" to be a tedious, overwrought bore. Bay's silly but dazzling "The Rock" and "Armageddon" reveled in their cheesy thrills and hokey dialogue while providing state-of-the-art eye candy, and didn't pretend to be something they're not. I, for one, will take spirited, briskly-paced "popcorn" over merely turgid, overlong "corn" any time.

- Robert L

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