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The more I think about Pearl
Harbor, the more it pisses me off.
It seemed enjoyable enough while I was watching it, but
afterwards, the flaws began to bubble up through the calculated,
jingoistic schlock. It’s
a day later and I’m liking it even less. Oh, and just so you know, I’m talking about the film –
not the actual events of December 7, 1941.
A lot of you people out there are too dumb to tell the
difference, which accounted for a number of messages condemning
me to a painful death for not feeling enough sympathy for the
men who lost their lives on the Andrea Gail.
I didn’t like The Perfect
Storm, but a bad review of that film doesn’t mean
I’m glad the ship’s crew are fishing with Jesus now.
Ditto for Harbor.
What follows is a critique of the film – not history.
Plenty of films use
music and imagery to coerce you into feeling emotions that you
may not particularly want to feel, but Harbor takes the
manipulation cake. On
the surface, it appears to be a simple combination of action and
romance, so, a la Titanic, there’s something for John
and for Mary. That’s
not so bad, but dig a bit deeper and you’ll find Harbor
to be a shameless, cunning monster that has carefully checked
and double-checked every important demographic of every
potential moviegoer. African-Americans like films?
Let’s add a completely meaningless subplot about a
black Navy cook. Hillbillies
spend money at the theatre nowadays?
Let’s give a Southern accent to both male leads.
That’s not so bad
either, and it’s been done before, so it’s easy to overlook.
But when you consider the parallel between Harbor’s
revisionist history and the Japanese box office gross of Titanic,
things become a little more sickening.
James Cameron’s film took in over $200 million in
Japan, so Harbor’s producers (Disney and Jerry
Bruckheimer) had to carefully find a way to make the antagonist
Japanese characters into a likeable bunch that had no choice but
to wipe out most of the U.S. Navy.
They practically made it seem like the bombing of Pearl
Harbor was our fault, just to guarantee a decent take at the
Japanese box office. Think
that’s bad? Variety
has reported that Disney will send special cuts of the film to
Germany and Japan with toned down references to “dirty Japs”
and other defamatory slang (like nobody was hurling slurs like
these in the ‘40s). Now that’s artistic integrity!
On to the story now, and
you don’t really need a recap if you’ve seen Titanic
(some scenes were even shot in the same giant water tank).
Harbor takes about 90 minutes to set up the love
triangle between nurse Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale, Brokedown
Palace) and hayseed pilots Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck, Bounce)
and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett, Here
on Earth). Then
something tragic happens (iceberg/bombing) that is both a
special effects extravaganza and approximately 40 minutes long.
And then somebody dies.
Because Harbor is
set during a pivotal moment in World War II, it will draw
unfavorable comparisons to Saving
Private Ryan, although its PG-13 rating doesn’t allow
the violence to become too gruesome (after all, scaring away the
kids means less cash in the coffers, and this is definitely all
about the money). Unlike
the claustrophobic Ryan,
which allowed the viewer to track a particular group of soldiers
during the invasion of Normandy, Harbor’s scope is much
grander. That’s
not to say it’s bad (there’s something about seeing American
soldiers caught so off guard that they’ve got toothbrushes in
their mouths as they watch the Japanese Zeroes spray everything
with bombs and bullets), but it’s definitely not as personal
and, as a result, lacks the emotional oomph of even a typical
episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Is it impressive? You
bet. Would I see it
again? Only if I
showed up 90 minutes late to miss the preamble, which made me
feel like a POW.
While Harbor
smacks of both Titanic and Ryan,
it thankfully doesn’t fall into the same
set-in-modern-day-but-told-primarily-through-one-long-flashback
trap that served as nothing but a distraction in those two
films. That’s
about the only positive thing I can say about Randall
Wallace’s script, which is yet more evidence that his Braveheart
must have been a total fluke.
Hans Zimmer’s (Hannibal)
score is cold and manipulative but does manage to drown out some
of Wallace’s cheesy dialogue.
Director Michael Bay (Armageddon) relaxes his
spastic style a bit and, with cinematographer John Schwartzman (The
Rock), concocts some nice-looking scenes (although some,
like the Hartnett/Beckinsale sexual romp through a hangar full
of hanging parachutes, inspire only a gag reflex).
As far as the acting
goes, there’s only so much you can do with a bad script and a
preponderance of scenes that were probably shot against a blue
screen. Affleck, Hartnett and Beckinsale fail to connect with
the audience in any manner whatsoever, and most of the
supporting cast isn’t around long enough to make a lasting
impression. Aside
from the stammering Ewen Bremner (Spud from Trainspotting),
the rest of the flyboys (William Lee Scott, Michael Shannon,
Matthew Davis) are all identical and as vanilla as their
real-life names. The
nursing crew is compromised of a gaggle of actresses best known
for starring in films/shows with one-word titles (James King, Blow;
Catherine Kellner, Shaft;
Jennifer Garner, Felicity; Sara Rue, Popular).
As part of his ongoing
effort to tackle every Navy cook role in Hollywood, Cuba Gooding
Jr. (Men of Honor) plays
Dorie Miller, one of Harbor’s few characters based in reality,
even though the film wouldn’t have been a smidgen different
with him. Dan
Aykroyd, Alec Baldwin, William Fichtner, Tom Sizemore and Colm
Feore all log in decent yet small turns, but the best
performance belongs to Jon Voight, who, along with numerous
facial prosthetics, plays Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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for
sustained intense war sequences, images of wounded, brief
sensuality and some language |
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