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Pearl Harbor Customer Reviews (55 - 57 of 144 Reviews)

masterpiece of mayhem
To me PEARL HARBOR is the best "war" movie that I ever saw. However, this movie is really a love story about two men in love with the same woman. The attack on Pearl Harbor is a mere backdrop for the basic plotline.

Visually, this film is full of beautiful shots of planes "soaring against the sky." Though I was born four years after the Day of Infamy, the battle scenes in the movie seem realistic to me, perhaps even more so than the usual B&W combat footage of the attack that we see on the History Channel.

This movie makes an historical event come to life because we get to know the characters well enough to become attached to them as the plot unfolds.

The director, Michael Bey, did his job well; so did the special effects people.

The movie grabbed me and held me for over three hours.

Very disappointing--not what it was advertised to be!
After waiting with anticipation for this movie, I was very disappointed. Michael Bay spent big bucks promoting this on it's historical accuracy and basically sold it as a semi-documentary film due to it's authenticity. It was very inaccurate actually. You simply don't get what you were told you would. Entertaining? Yeah, to a point, it was, but it was sold on it's historical portrayal of the events.

I lived on Oahu for several years and spent much of my free time visiting and researching December 7th sites and the history of the attack--including talking with many veterans and residents there on that fateful Sunday. Does that somehow make me an instant expert? No, not a chance. But, this movie did not do justice to those people or the honor of such a solemn moment in history. Why don't I write a book, if I know so much, or make my own movie? As you can tell by this review, writing is not my forte, and more importantly, I would probably make the profit motive number one too, over historical accuracy, as did the makers of this film. The important point is, the opportunity to make a truly inspiring movie, as this was hyped to be, was lost for the sake of Hollywood hoopla, and the bucks too, of course. Disappointing!

The most upsetting/rediculous episode of the movie to me was the response of the P-40 fighters, flying at Mach 1 (speed of sound--impossible in a prop driven fighter of the day), less than 20 feet off the ground between computer generated buildings and hangars. One building was so very obviously computer created right in front of the main entrance to an aircraft maintenance hangar, it blocked any access to the hangar. This was to enable the "Star Wars" effect of aircraft buzzing between the "canyons" of buildings. Nonsense! It worked for "Star Wars", but not for this movie. Sad, really sad--this is the kind of hype I refer to. I worked in all the hangars at Hickam AFB and Wheeler AFB, during my time in Hawaii, and visited/saw every other hangar on the island--there were none then or now configured like this silly setup was.

The Doolittle Raid and much of the love triangle, though somewhat entertaining, added little to the movie, but the love story parts had to be expected. If they insisted on putting the Doolittle raid in, as they did of course, they could have at least gotten it partially right. I guess they did actually--they got Doolittle's name right--that's about all. A for instance is, during the real Doolittle Raid, the B-25s were not in any kind of formation like the movie portrayed, they flew in trail, minutes apart, in the order they took off from the Hornet. They didn't have the fuel to spend time forming up after takeoff. Most barely made it to the target and few, if any, made it to the planned rendezvous point in China due to fuel exhaustion. They bailed out or crash landed and were scattered all over China--one crew landed in Russia. "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" (see my review of this 1944 classic), although also Hollywood, is a fair representation of the Doolittle prep and attack.

I didn't expect a documentary, but I expected something more professional than this considering the money expended and the buildup about all the research that was supposed to have been done to ensure historical accuracy. The research failed in it's purpose or was intentionally ignored, and we got little for our expectations.

For a movie hyped to be so historically accurate--this absolutely wasn't. Had the producers not made such an effort to brag and advertise about how historically accurate this was, it might have been accepted as just good entertainment. If you're gonna say it, you really ought to do it. Though entertaining to a point, the film was a big disappointment because it had been so built up. Can't please everyone, I guess. If you haven't seen it, you should, but don't get your expectations up too high. Rating this movie one star is being Santa Claus--none, zero, zip, nada would be more than enough. Ahhh, I'm easy!!!!


Cheesier than fondue
Even if a movie is cheesy, there is good sort of cheesiness and there is the bad kind. This is definitely very, very bad cheese. If not for their very good marketing campaign and Kate Beckinsale, I wouldn't have watched this, but hey - who can resist Kate.

Sadly this movie is an utter waste of time. Ben Affleck is easily one of the worst actors at the moment, the dialogue is gut-wrentchingly bad and the screenplay equally atrocious.

I don't understand how Hollywood keeps forgetting that what ppl want is a good story.

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