Pearl Harbor

May 21^st, 2001

On this day, Enron announced that it would no longer supply power to India. Rumour has it that many of their customers asked them to get on with it as Pearl Harbor was premiering in America that day and they wanted to avoid it reaching them.

The Partially Educated Review

There's a director's commentary somewhere (I think it's for The Rock) where Michael Bay talks of his admiration for James Cameron. He needn't have bothered telling us; Pearl Harbor makes it pretty obvious. The parallels between this and Titanic are so clear that it may as well be an official sequel with both being exceedingly long and dedicating less time to the titular event than they do to the love story at the centre of the narrative. Also, I'm sure it's a coincidence that Titanic “boasted” Celine Dion singing My Heart Will Go On and Pearl Harbor “boasted” Faith Hill singing There You'll Be; a song that was actually offered to Dion first.

Where they differ is that Titanic isn't quite as bad as some people would have you believe. Pearl Harbor is.

It's the timeless tale of two fighter pilots and one woman facing the great inconvenience of having their insipid love triangle interrupted by nearly 2500 people with the sheer gall to die and take away some of the attention. Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett turn on the mope (and little else), while Kate Beckinsale looks beautiful. Let's face it, that's all a woman's expected to do in a Michael Bay film, but she does it very well.

That part of the story is where a lot of the criticism is thrown at Pearl Harbor and it's wholly deserved, but my main gripe lies elsewhere. The film is not without its moments that attempt to display the futility of war (sometimes successfully), but they are completely dogged down by a staunch good guys vs bad guys mentality. Now, I'm not about to start debating the heroism and bravery of the people who fought in conflicts such as this. We all know how well it goes down when a privileged millennial starts saying stuff like that.

However, when you present to me scenes of soldiers taking delight in the prospect of inflicting death on other people, I'm going to get a little irked. Not that I'm saying it may not have happened (it quite possibly did), but when I see the line “we're bombing Tokyo” be greeted with cheers and excitement, it can't just be me who thinks that's a little perverse. The best war films are those in which characters deal with the conflict between the horror of what they're doing and their sense of duty. This film has them pretty much revel in what they're going to do and it makes the characters so easy to dislike. I don't want to make this look like I'm saying Michael Bay thinks war is a good thing...

…as there's enough in Pearl Harbor to make it clear that isn't the case. However, those moments feel hollower than a brain donor's skull when they're coupled with scenes that completely contradict that. Likewise, the flashy spectacle and daredevil antics isn't particularly welcome either. Hartnett and Affleck's characters are incredibly guilty of this, as they move from one flashy manoeuvrer to the next, once again perpetuating the notion that this was a war won by two men and a couple of planes.

Pearl Harbor is a classic misfire. It's a tailor-made piece of Oscar bait that was so transparent it will forever dog Michael Bay's career. Even if the guy suddenly came into his own and made a truly magnificent piece of work, I genuinely feel like his past transgressions would dog him too much for it to receive any true accolades. Only one month to go till Transformers 5 though. You never know, the guy may surprise us.

THREE out of 10