The Japanese sneak attack on Pearl
Harbor that brought the United States
into World War II has inspired a
splendid movie, full of vivid
performances and unforgettable scenes,
a movie that uses the coming of war as a
backdrop for individual stories of love,
ambition, heroism and betrayal. The
name of that movie is’From Here to
Eternity.’
’Pearl Harbor, ’ the noisy, expensive and
very long new blockbuster from Jerry
Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, steals an
occasional glance in the direction of
’Eternity, ’ Fred Zinnemann’s durable
1953 melodrama, adapted from James
Jones’s sprawling best seller. A couple
smooches in front of pounding Pacific
surf, though they don’t actually roll
around in it, as did Burt Lancaster and
Deborah Kerr. Military police officers
break up a barroom fight. And since the
movie is in ripe, lustrous color, the sun
dresses and Hawaiian shirts look just
fabulous. But’Pearl Harbor’ has as little
interest in character as it does,
ultimately, in history.
For all its epic pretensions( as if epic
were a matter of running time,
tumescent music and earnest voice-over
pronouncements), the movie works best
as a bang-and-boom action picture, a
loud symphony of bombardment and
explosion juiced up with frantic editing
and shiny computer-generated imagery.
When Jon Voight appears as President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, his face bloated
with several pounds of prosthetic latex
( and his voice burnished into a patrician
drawl), you half expect one of those
inevitable action-thriller unmaskings, in
which he peels off the rubber, climbs out
of the wheelchair and reveals himself to
be Steven Seagal ready to lay a
smackdown on the treacherous Japanese.
The film’s reported budget was$135
million, which breaks down to roughly
$45 million an hour.
The bulk of the money seems to have
been spent - and not too badly spent, as
these things go - on the long sequence
devoted to the attack itself. The
appearance of Japanese bombers
buzzing in formation through the bright
morning sunshine as housewives tend
their clotheslines and children frolic on
ball fields is meant to convey dread and
impending menace.
But after an hour of absurd, lump-in-
the-throat romanticism, the arrival of
the enemy comes as something of a
relief. The crashing of bombs and the
whine of bullets at least pushes Hans
Zimmer’s oppressive score into the
background, and, in a further service to
humanity, quiets the thundering
bombast of Randall Wallace’s dialogue.
Nearly every line of the script drops
from the actors’ mouths with the leaden
clank of exposition, timed with bad
sitcom beats. According to the time-
tested Bruckheimer formula, each
heartfelt utterance must be soothed by a
little joke; a moment of light-heartedness
must resolve into a muffled choke of
pathos. No shot seems to last more than
five seconds, no scene more than a
minute. People say only what is directly
relevant to the movie’s themes:’If there
are many more back home like you, ’ a
British officer tells one of the heroes,
’God help anyone who goes to war with
America.’
The upstanding Yank tells him a bit later:
’We’re not anxious to die. Just anxious
to matter.’
The main narrative concerns two
boyhood chums, Rafe McCawley and
Danny Walker, who after a brief
boyhood idyll in Tennessee grow into
dashing flyboys played by Ben Affleck
and Josh Hartnett. Rafe is reckless and
gallant, Danny a bit more shy. In 1941
they find themselves in a company of
easily distinguished war-movie types: the
stutterer, the would-be Lothario, the
dumb guy and so on.( In earlier, less
self-conscious times, they would also
have been sorted by ethnic and regional
background.) Their commander is Col.
James Doolittle, one of a handful of real
historical figures in the movie, played -
with a local news anchor’s stentorian
growl - by Alec Baldwin, who seems
ready to devour whatever matériel is
left unscathed by the enemy’s bombs.
The fliers soon meet their female
counterparts, a gaggle of nurses similarly
typed for easy recognition: the fat one,
the boy-crazy blonde, the shy girl with
glasses and so on. One of these, Evelyn
Johnson( Kate Beckinsale), falls in love
with Rafe after they meet cute during a
physical exam. Suffering from what
sounds like dyslexia, he is unable to sort
out the letters on the eye chart, but after
hearing his eloquent paean to his own
flying skills, she passes him.( Curiously,
his disability does not interfere with his
ability to read and write love letters
once he and Evelyn are separated by the
war.)
She also jabs him in the rear end with an
inoculation needle, and he passes out
and breaks his nose, which sets up the
following priceless exchange: He:’You
are so beautiful it hurts.’ She:’It’s your
nose that hurts.’ He:’No, it’s my
heart.’( Me:’No, it’s my stomach.’)
Mr. Affleck and Ms. Beckinsale do what
they can with their lines, and glow with
the satiny shine of real movie stars. Mr.
Hartnett’s anxious inwardness plays
effectively against Mr. Affleck’s frat-boy
bravado, and a few supporting players,
notably James King, Dan Aykroyd and
Tom Sizemore, are permitted a few
seconds of real acting. But the script, and
Mr. Bay’s impatient direction, do not
give anyone sufficient time or space to
develop shadings of character. Instead of
a story, the film provides data, telling
you what it should show, suggest or leave
implicit. Evelyn falsifies the eye exam
because, she explains, her father was a
pilot, too. Young Danny’s father’s
mistreatment of his son is a result of
trauma suffered in World War I.
One of the heroes - critical courtesy
forbids me from saying which one - is
shot down by the Luftwaffe over the
English Channel during the Blitz and
declared dead. Later he shows up in
Hawaii( this will be a surprise only if
you believe that a top-billed actor can
die 45 minutes into a movie like this)
and explains that he was trapped in
Nazi-occupied France and somehow
escaped. That sounds like an interesting
story, but the film is too busy with the
ludicrous triangle that develops among
Rafe, Danny and Evelyn to tell it.
And it’s also too busy to do much with
Cuba Gooding Jr., who plays Dorie Miller,
a real-life cook aboard the U.S.S. Arizona
whose valor during the attack made him
the first African-American to receive the
Navy Cross. Miller’s story is boiled down
to about a half-dozen short scenes: he
wins a boxing match, discusses manhood
with Evelyn, receives a compliment from
his commanding officer, cradles the
injured officer in his arms and shoots
down a plane. After Mr. Gooding’s
appearance in’Men of Honor, ’ his role
here feels like a step backward into a
tokenism one might have thought
obsolete. The Dorie Miller subplot smacks
of demographic base covering and self-
congratulatory bad faith.
’Pearl Harbor’ is strenuously respectful
of contemporary sensitivities, sometimes
at the cost of accuracy. The United States
military in 1941 was apparently a
smoke-free( and virtually sex-free)
environment. Even the Chesterfield-
loving F. D. R. is never shown lighting
up. Racism in the military is mentioned,
but neither witnessed nor explored. On a
more encouraging note, while the term
Jap is uttered from time to time, some
effort has been made to acknowledge the
humanity of the adversaries. Not too
much, though. The film’s narrative arc,
demanding a trimphant ending,
concludes with Colonel Doolittle leading
Rafe and Danny on a bombing raid
whose targets include Tokyo, and which,
in contrast to the Pearl Harbor attack, is
viewed entirely from the perspective of
the bombers.
But when it leaves its big themes and
silly story on the ground, ’Pearl Harbor’
is something of a tour de force. The
aerial combat is thrillingly executed, and
Mr. Bay has clearly mastered some tricky
war-picture techniques, managing to
convey disorder and mayhem on a large
scale while maintaining a coherent sense
of space and geography. The four editors
listed in the credits have clearly earned
their combat pay, and the director of
photography, John Schwartzman, juggles
film stocks, lenses and color treatments
to create a collage of destruction at once
disorienting and viscerally effective.
But as in other Bruckheimer-Bay
collaborations(’The Rock, ’
’Armageddon’), the violence has no
emotional resonance. We see bodies
tossed in the air by explosions, maimed
sailors and dying soldiers, but the horror
of death in wartime registers only
intermittently, as when the sailors
trapped inside the hull of the Arizona
reach above the surface to touch the
hands of the men trying, in vain, to
rescue them.
You emerge from’Pearl Harbor’
numbed and dazzled, but not especially
moved or enlightened. It is not a terrible
movie, but rather a defiantly,
extravagantly average one. May 25,
2001, is hardly a date that will live in
infamy. The Allied leader to paraphrase
is not Roosevelt, but Churchill: never
have so many spent so much on so little.
’Pearl Harbor’ is rated PG-13( Parents
strongly cautioned) . It has some mild
swearing, a gauzy sex scene and many
scenes of intense and brutal combat.
PEARL HARBOR
Directed by Michael Bay; written by
Randall Wallace; director of
photography, John Schwartzman; edited
by Chris Lebenzon, Steven Rosenblum,
Mark Goldblatt and Roger Barton; music
by Hans Zimmer; production designer,
Nigel Phelps; produced by Jerry
Bruckheimer and Mr. Bay; released by
Touchstone Pictures. Running time: 183
minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
WITH: Ben Affleck( Rafe McCawley), Josh
Hartnett( Danny Walker), Kate
Beckinsale( Evelyn Johnson), William Lee
Scott( Billy), Greg Zola( Anthony R.
Fusco), Ewen Bremner( Red), Alec
Baldwin( Col. James Doolittle), James
King( Betty), Catherine Kellner( Barbara),
Jennifer Garner( Sandra), Jon Voight
( President Franklin D. Roosevelt), Cuba
Gooding Jr.( Dorie Miller), Mako
( Admiral Yamamoto), Colm Feore
( Admiral Kimmel), Dan Aykroyd
( Captain Thurman), William Fichtner
( Danny’s Father) and Tom Sizemore