Well im here and just in time to save you of the obnoxious spectacle of Pearl Harbor.Here is a movie that really doesnt have a message beyond the lazy absolutism that America is great, and the implication that the Japanese are emotionless villains who wear funny underwear.
While the ’’America is great’’ story is a big part of Pearl Harbor, the main plot is a love triangle starring Ben ’’I Still Suck’’ Affleck, Kate ’’I Suck Too’’ Beckinsale, and Josh ’’I don’t Suck as Bad’’ Hartnett. The movie gets points for writing dialog that perfectly matches the actors: stiff as a blue corpse in the river.
I think director Michael Bay went into this thing thinking he needed to make an epic. He didn’t think ’’I need to make a good movie, ’’ or ’’I have a story to tell.’’ He went in with the idea of ’’Pearl Harbor’’ and ’’epic’’. But to pad this concept out to epic proportions, he subjects us to two hours of Affleck, Hartnett and Beckinsale acting out the most timid of scenes. Seriously, that’s what the goal is here: a superficial, phony feel-good view of America. It’s dreamy, soft-lit nostalgia for cowards afraid to look at the real past.
Hartnett and Affleck play pilots with the personalities and complexity of sidekicks in a comic strip. There is some nonsense about Affleck being dyslexic, but as typical of Hollywood, it amounts to nothing. Beckinsale is part of a fleet of wholsesomely attractive nurses in white. Affleck and Beckinsale love each other, they send each other love letters, Affleck is shot down and thought to be dead. Oh, shit! He’s not dead, but now Hartnett and Beckinsale love each other. What will happen? Who cares?
With uncanny skill, Affleck once again inhabits space without being matter. He’s as stiff as they come, and in many scenes, you can see what a bad actor does when he’s trying too hard: he squints-a lot. Hartnett might be a better actor, and I’m sure the girls think his beady eyes and tiny mouth are dreamy, but writer Randall Wallace asks him to vomit up dialog as foul as my usual language. Beckinsale looks kind of pretty, but the kind of pretty you see in sweater catalogs, not the kind of pretty that looks like she could act. And all she does in Pearl Harbor is get dewy-eyed about Affleck and model vintage clothes.
The war scenes do look pretty, probably as pretty as war can look. They aren’t scary, they’re like a very expensive fireworks show, all meant to make you say ’’Ooo, ’’ and ’’Aaah.’’ I still can’t figure out how Bay did it, but he makes sinking ships and drowning soldiers look like a calendar you’d buy at Hallmark, and he works hard to up the quotient of young men in underwear. Part of the problem is the over-the-top score that swells and bleeds like a malignant tumor under the surface of the movie. It’s always there, you can feel it, and you know it’s bad.
Bay and Wallace wear patriotism like it’s a protective cloak and it makes them immune to the rules for making a movie tolerable. So, they can be lazy and show the Japanese as an efficient killing machine. Sure, they probably think they are being even-handed about the land of the rising sun, but if they are, why is the audience supposed to root every time an American calls a Japanese ’’son of a bitch’’ or ’’bastard’’? Why are they portrayed as people who think only of war, and why is no soldier ever sad to kill them? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that Bay uses the Japanese as agit-props to fire the audience up. Disney would be thrilled if audiences applauded when they die.
It’s a shame. Why are they so hellbent on retelling their past in black and white, with them always winning and being the good guys? Are Americans so insecure they need Hollywood to reassure themselves with this flick?