Rated PG-13 for sustained intense war sequences, images of wounded, brief sensuality and some language.
183 Minutes

Directed By: Micheal Bay
Written By: Randall Wallace
Staring: Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale, Josh Harnett, Cuba Gooding Jr., Alec Baldwin, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, William Lee Scott, Ewen Bremmer, and Jennifer Garner

Danny, you can’t die. You can’t die. You know why? ‘Cause you’re gonna be a father. You’re gonna be a daddy. I wasn’t supposed to tell you. You’re gonna be a father. -Rafe

Synopsis

Pearl Harbor follows the story of two best friends, Rafe and Danny, and their love lives as they go off to join the war

Review

In my gut of guts I knew I should have called it a day when Ben Affleck’s character “died”.  Even though it was only forty minutes into a three hour movie, it was clearly going to be the highlight and climax of the film and the rest of the film was going to put Lord Of The Rings fourteen endings to shame with one hundred endings.  The movie goer in me was glutton for punishment and I kept watching and have decided the results have led me to one conclusion: Pearl Harbor should clearly be put in the horror section at the video stores and rated “NW”, Never Watch.

Everything about this movie is pretty much awful.  There might be a few good Josh Harnett/Kate Beckinsale moments, but there are so many bad moments in between it’s really difficult to remember any of that.  Especially when there is BenAffleck in a movie with an uncomfortable accent, constantly delivering awkward lines because of his inability to act.  If you can’t show up for a Micheal Bay movie and act, you shouldn’t be an actor.  He puts enough explosive distractions and excitement that a terrible actor should not be something obvious to an audience, butAffleck was a constant reminder of how terrible the dialogue actually was, and how awful he was at delivering it.  Any moment paired with JoshHarnett or Kate Beckinsale, who are talented, left his inability completely exposed.

Some of the action is decent, but a lot of it becomes irrelevant because of the way Micheal Bay integrated it all.  I’m a huge fan of Micheal Bay, but he just seemed lost doing an epic film on this scale.  One dimensional action flicks with high octane pacing, good charismatic actors that can make a bad line good, and cool explosions is his forte.  Epic tale of love, and horrific historic memory, not so much.  Besides the obvious failures it just felt like it was trying to capitalize on the success of the love story tragedy of Titantic and the brilliance of Saving Private Ryan.

I waited years to see this because I had the inkling it would be as awful as predicted, and unfortunately it lived up to all it’s negative hype.  At least if it were shorter it would have been easier to ignore some of the bad lingering moments, but there was so much time wasted and so much time to reflect on how terribleAffleck was, the historical inaccuracies, and the actual lack of emotion put into the movie.  Everything felt forced and wrong.  Pearl Harbor has been rightfully declared as one of the worst movies of the decade.  Such a shame.

Popularity: 3% [?]