-Caveat Lector-
Chicago Sun-Times
http://www.suntimes.com
PEARL HARBOR / * 1/2 (PG-13)
May 25, 2001
Rafe McCawley: Ben Affleck
Danny Walker: Josh Hartnett
Evelyn: Kate Beckinsale
Doolittle: Alec Baldwin
Dorie Miller: Cuba Gooding Jr.
President Roosevelt: Jon Voigt
Touchstone presents a film directed by Michael Bay. Written by
Randall Wallace. Running time: 183 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for
sustained intense war sequences, images of wounded, brief sensuality
and some language).
BY ROGER EBERT
"Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about
how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an
American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant
special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The
film has been directed without grace, vision or originality, and
although you may walk out quoting lines of dialogue, it will not be
because you admire them.
The filmmakers seem to have aimed the film at an audience that may
not have heard of Pearl Harbor, or perhaps even of World War II. This
is the Our Weekly Reader version. If you have the slightest knowledge
of the events in the film, you will know more than it can tell you.
There is no sense of history, strategy or context; according to this
movie, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because the United States cut off
its oil supply, and it was down to an 18-month reserve. Would going
to war restore the fuel sources? Did it perhaps also have imperialist
designs? The movie doesn't say.
So shaky is the film's history that at the end, when Jimmy
Doolittle's Tokyo raiders crash-land in China, they're shot at by
Japanese patrols without any explanation about the Sino-Japanese war
already under way. I predict some viewers will leave the theater
sincerely confused about why there were Japanese in China.
As for the movie's portrait of the Japanese themselves, it is so
oblique that Japanese audiences will find little to complain about,
apart from the fact that they play such a small role in their own
raid. There are several scenes where the Japanese high command
debates military tactics, but all of their dialogue is strictly
expository; they state facts but do not emerge with personalities or
passions. Only Adm. Yamamoto (Mako) is seen as an individual, and his
dialogue seems to have been rewritten with the hindsight of history.
Congratulated on a brilliant raid, he demurs, "A brilliant man would
find a way not to fight a war." And later, "I fear all we have done
is to awaken a sleeping giant."
Do you imagine at any point the Japanese high command engaged in the
1941 Japanese equivalent of exchanging high fives and shouting "yes!"
while pumping their fists in the air? Not in this movie, where the
Japanese seem to have been melancholy even at the time about the
regrettable need to play such a negative role in such a positive
Hollywood film.
The American side of the story centers on two childhood friends from
Tennessee with the standard-issue screenplay names Rafe McCawley (Ben
Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett). They enter the Army Air
Corps and both fall in love with the same nurse, Evelyn Johnson (Kate
Beckinsale)--first Rafe falls for her, and then, after he is reported
dead, Danny. Their first date is subtitled "Three Months Later" and
ends with Danny, having apparently read the subtitle, telling
Evelyn, "Don't let it be three months before I see you again, OK?"
That gets almost as big a laugh as her line to Rafe, "I'm gonna give
Danny my whole heart, but I don't think I'll ever look at another
sunset without thinking of you."
That kind of bad laugh would have been sidestepped in a more literate
screenplay, but our hopes are not high after an early newsreel report
that the Germans are bombing "downtown London"--a difficult target,
since although there is such a place as "central London," at no time
in 2,000 years has London ever had anything described by anybody as
a "downtown."
There is not a shred of conviction or chemistry in the love triangle,
which results after Rafe returns alive to Hawaii shortly before the
raid on Pearl Harbor and is angry at Evelyn for falling in love with
Danny, inspiring her timeless line, "I didn't even know until the day
you turned up alive--and then all this happened."
Evelyn is a heroine in the aftermath of the raid, performing triage
by using her lipstick to separate the wounded who should be treated
from those left to die. In a pointless stylistic choice, director
Michael Bay and cinematographer John Schwartzman shoot some of the
hospital scenes in soft focus, some in sharp focus, some blurred.
Why? In the newsreel sequences, they fade in and out of black and
white with almost amusing haste, while the newsreel announcer sounds
not like a period voice but like a Top-40 DJ in an echo chamber.
The most involving material in the film comes at the end, when
Doolittle (Alec Baldwin) leads his famous raid on Tokyo, flying Army
bombers off the decks of Navy carriers and hoping to crash-land in
China. He and his men were heroes, and their story would make a good
movie (and indeed has: "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo"). Another hero in
the movie is the African-American cook Dorie Miller (Cuba Gooding
Jr.), who because of his race was not allowed to touch a gun in the
racist pre-war Navy, but opens fire during the raid and shoots down
two planes. He's shown getting a medal; in real life, he died later
in the war, and the Navy was none too swift to part with its medal
even posthumously.
As for the raid itself, a little goes a long way. What is the point,
really, of more than half an hour of planes bombing ships, of
explosions and fireballs, of roars on the soundtrack and bodies
flying through the air and people running away from fighters that are
strafing them? How can it be entertaining or moving when it's simply
about the most appalling slaughter? Why do the filmmakers think we
want to see this, unrelieved by intelligence, viewpoint or insight?
It was a terrible, terrible day.
I have visited the Battleship Arizona Memorial. My late Aunt Martha
dated a boy, Willis Hartrick, who is entombed in the ship. Three
thousand died in all. This is not a movie about them. It is an
unremarkable action movie; Pearl Harbor supplies the subject, but not
the inspiration.
Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.
*****
Thursday May 24 1:19 AM ET
''Pearl Harbor'' a film that will live in infamy
Pearl Harbor (WWII epic romance, color, PG-13, 3:02)
By Todd McCarthy, Daily Variety Chief Film Critic
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - The bombs explode brilliantly but the story is
a bust in ``Pearl Harbor.''
Except for the central 40-minute attack sequence, which combines
razzle-dazzle pyrotechnics with high grade visual effects to deliver
the destructive spectacle people want to see, this $140 million Jerry
Bruckheimer-Michael Bay World War II extravaganza features a script
that Jack Warner would have found wanting even for a propaganda
melodrama at the time, along with a cast perfectly in tune with its
shallowness.
Resulting three-hour opus, which plays out from here to what seems
like eternity, isn't bad enough to keep the public from flocking to
it in the kind of numbers that will support its seemingly pre-
ordained status as the No. 1 film of the summer. But for all the coin
the picture will generate, the tepid love triangle hardly seems like
one that audiences will genuinely and warmly embrace.
Although not willfully inaccurate in its account of Japan's surprise
attack on the Hawaiian home base of the United States' Pacific Fleet
on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the event that triggered Uncle Sam's
entry into the war more than two years after it began, Randall
Wallace's screenplay takes a Classics Illustrated fifth grade
approach to one of 20th century history's most explosive moments.
Preferring to recycle standard-issue inspirational cliches from the
period rather than to delve into the many fascinating elements that
led to the clash, pic represents the anti-historical approach
Hollywood seems to think the modern public prefers.
With ``Titanic'' clearly serving as its artistic and financial model,
``Pearl Harbor'' seeks to honor all those who selflessly dedicated
and, in many cases, sacrificed themselves for their country. But the
characters, even given the ample opportunity of such protracted
running time, don't exhibit any traits other than noble patriotism
and romantic distress.
What the viewer is left with, then, are visions of staggering action,
conflict and tragedy played out on the grandest of possible canvases,
but with no one you know or care about to emotionally pull you into
the events.
Watching the 350 Japanese fighters and bombers blast away at American
ships and personnel in something close to real time is arresting and
vivid, but it's not wrenching or breathtaking or heart-stopping; you
think more about what it took to put it onscreen rather than being
swept up in it.
What prevents the attack from packing its full punch are the 80
minutes of dreariness that precede it. All we'll ever know about Rafe
McCawley and Danny Walker is what we learn in the prologue -- that
they've been best friends since their cornpone youths in Tennessee
and have never wanted to do anything but fly. They get their chance
in 1941, when they undergo some very ``Top Gun''-ish flight training
on Long Island, which is here miraculously graced by some imposing
mountain backdrops.
But their paths diverge when the impatient Rafe (Ben Affleck)
volunteers for the English Eagle Squadron, while Danny (Josh
Hartnett) remains Stateside. Before leaving, the somewhat goofy, self-
deprecating Rafe has an intense few weeks in New York with Evelyn
(Kate Beckinsale), a comely nurse who charms him by giving him a few
sharp pokes in the backside and overlooking the fact that he can't
make sense of the eye chart. Evelyn, Rafe decides, is the girl for
him.
Meanwhile, Danny and Evelyn have ended up in balmy Oahu, where
military service represented a sort of precursor to Club Med even as
the perceived Japanese threat was building. Pic acknowledges for
about five seconds that there was Japanese espionage going on in the
area, and for about 10 seconds that American authorities were divided
over what Japan might do and how best to prepare for it, but entirely
ignores the fascinating social/racial/political dynamic on the
islands at the time.
Nor does it take advantage of this lull before the storm to develop
the characters in any interesting ways.
Evelyn and her fellow nurse girlfriends remain narrowly man-minded,
and not a shred of personal background info is given to the female
lead herself. The guys Danny pals around with are equally one-
dimensional, and another man, Doris ``Dorrie'' Miller, played by Cuba
Gooding Jr., gets maybe 10 minutes of screen time to illustrate how
blacks were subordinated in the segregated Navy of the time to menial
jobs.
Danny and an initially reluctant Evelyn are brought together in a
union consummated in a swirl of photogenic white parachutes.
But faster than you can say ``A Guy Named Joe,'' who should turn up
but Rafe, ready for action in more ways than one. After a barroom
brawl, the guys have just acknowledged that they have no idea how
they'll ever be able to see eye-to-eye again when the Japanese
provide them with an answer out of the blue.
Although never pretending to do justice to the Japanese side a la
``Tora! Tora! Tora!,'' neither does ``Pearl Harbor'' wish to offend
the world's No. 2 movie market. So it makes do with brief, formal
scenes of Nipponese officers, principally the attack's formulator and
chief proponent, Admiral Yamamoto (Mako), making subtitled
pronouncements about the United States' oil embargo having given them
little choice but to go to war.
Overall treatment of the Japanese is reasonably respectful and non-
inflammatory, given that they are still the bad guys herein; there
are several references to the ``Japs,'' but never anything worse.
Rather, the film reserves its most vigorous sanitization efforts to
the almost total elimination of cigarettes from a military scene in
which nearly everyone smoked. The same revisionism applied in
``Saving Private Ryan,'' and it's ludicrous.
After the prolonged and frequently tedious build-up, Bay misses
another bet by refusing to permit a few minutes of quiet before the
early morning skies fill with roaring Zeros, Kates and Vals. Few
settings offer a more alluring vision of earthly paradise than
Hawaii, and it seems perverse not to allow the audience to take a few
deep, if uneasy breaths before the main event.
But while it is not as compulsively frenetic as it was in
``Armageddon,'' Bay's filmmaking style is still defined by relentless
cutting and grandiose camera moves. And this seemingly ingrained
inability to hold any shot more than a few seconds actually works
against one of the prime goals of a war film -- to present a coherent
sense of logistics, the geographic relationship of one force versus
another.
It also ill-serves the epic style; when dozens of Japanese planes
zoom down a long valley from the north toward Pearl Harbor, one wants
to behold the unique spectacle at length, to let its horrific majesty
become imprinted on the brain.
The attack, then, is spectacular but not rousing. The physical
verisimilitude is unimpeachable; a few explosions to the side, the
sequence avoids the usual computer-generated look, and the
combination of roaring planes, swirling smoke, splattering bullets,
scurrying soldiers, fallen men, desperate nurses and sinking boats
creates a strong image of desperate chaos and confusion, and fills
the screen with visceral incident.
In the midst of all the destruction, the beginnings of American
resistance are seen in the commandeering by Rafe and Danny of two
fighter planes, which engage the Japanese in dog fights that see
seven Zeros bite the dust and eventually inspire Jimmy Doolittle
(Alec Baldwin) to select the two buddies to join him four months
later on his famous bombing raid on Tokyo.
Casting reminds of a Warner Bros. war drama for which they couldn't
get Humphrey Bogart or Errol Flynn so they went with George Raft or
George Brent instead. Rafe is supposed to suffer from deep emotional
hurt, but the blandly handsome Affleck couldn't convince that he'd
ever so much as been turned down for a date, much less lost the love
of his life to his best friend. Hartnett comes off as a tag-along
kid, while Beckinsale is all fancy coiffures and thick lipstick in a
role that is startlingly undefined.
Just compare their superficiality to the complex characters in ``From
Here to Eternity'' and what's missing here becomes terribly clear.
Lenser John Schwartzman goes for the hard-edged, contrasty look
of '40s studio productions to sometimes interesting, sometimes
obvious effect, although the film never takes on a thick atmosphere
of its own. Score is unusually overbearing coming from Hans Zimmer,
with echoes of ``Gladiator'' bouncing around throughout.
*****
Wednesday May 23 10:33 AM ET
At the Movies: 'Pearl Harbor'
By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer
The makers of ``Pearl Harbor'' have good reason to expect practically
every American to turn out for their movie. After all, they took the
trouble of listing most of us in the credits.
Hunting for your name in the 10-plus minutes of end credits would be
far more productive than watching the nearly three hours of dreck
that precedes them.
``Pearl Harbor'' may well be the ultimate modern example of Hollywood
bloat and bilge. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay
flung $135 million - $135 million! - at their subject and produced a
dumb, soulless behemoth that delivers the cinematic equivalent of
shell shock.
For all the 118 actors listed, the movie offers almost no sense of
authentic humanity. The faces the filmmakers plaster on their
characters are as flat and stereotyped as those on war-recruitment
posters.
The Bay-Bruckheimer formula of treating people as secondary to
explosions worked just fine in ``The Rock'' and ``Armageddon.'' Those
movies bordered on live-action cartoons.
But Bay and Bruckheimer are now dealing in something bigger than a
terrorist siege on Alcatraz or even a planet-killing asteroid. Their
subject is real, fresh in the collective memory and vital in recent
world history.
You can't tell the story of Pearl Harbor without blowing a lot of
things up, but with so much money to burn, the filmmakers could have
channeled a little more to script and character development.
Ben Affleck is at his most boring as Rafe McCawley, who trains as a
fighter pilot with childhood buddy Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett, going
toe-to-toe with Affleck for dullness).
Rafe falls for Navy nurse Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale, who gives
an uncharacteristically numb performance). Their romance is shattered
after Rafe is presumed dead in the Battle of Britain, where he'd
joined a U.S. squadron.
Both now stationed at Pearl Harbor, Danny and Evelyn commiserate.
Next thing you know, Evelyn's friends are telling her to move on with
her life, that it's been all of three months and she needs to get
back into circulation.
Guess whose arms she circulates into? And guess who turns up alive in
Pearl Harbor barely a day before the Japanese attack?
The script by Randall Wallace is forced and foolish, an epic soap
opera.
The first half of ``Pearl Harbor'' is spent on Rafe and Danny's
tedious friendship and their monotonous relationships with Evelyn.
There's no spark between Beckinsale and either leading man, while
Affleck and Hartnett never muster any kinship, as friends or rivals.
Supporting players include Jon Voight as Franklin Roosevelt, Alec
Baldwin as Col. Jimmy Doolittle, and Cuba Gooding Jr., Dan Aykroyd,
Mako and Tom Sizemore, all pretty much phoning in roles that have
little dimension.
The star of ``Pearl Harbor'' is the 40-minute attack sequence, a
combination of live explosions and digital effects. There's a handful
of gripping images of sailors on sinking ships, but the battle isn't
terribly artful or original in capturing the horrors of war.
The violence is sanitized for sake of a PG-13 rating.
Bay and Bruckheimer also had an eye on political correctness to avoid
offending Japanese audiences. Japan's rulers are treated
superficially and sympathetically as leaders who feel compelled to
attack to preserve their way of life.
For all its feebleness, ``Pearl Harbor'' will have audiences lined up
around the block. Disney has marketed the stuffing out of the movie,
making it seem like a patriotic duty to see it.
That's the real offense.
``Pearl Harbor,'' released by Disney's Touchstone Pictures, is rated
PG-13 for sustained intense war sequences, images of the wounded,
brief sensuality and some language. Running time: 182 minutes.
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