Once a movie is successful there are bound to be imitators. The problem was that Titanic was absurdly expensive. If it was done right the Titanic clone would cost even more and there was always a chance that it would fail and take the company down with it. This is the problem Buena Vista faced when it pondered Randall Wallace’s script for just such a project.
Wallace and director Michael Bay have basically followed the formula that made Titanic so successful. The sinking of the HMS Titanic was a disaster of epic proportion so was the battle of Pearl Harbor. There was a love triangle they have one here. There were incredible special effects in Titanic and they’ve got them here too. After all LOTS and LOTS of very BIG ships sunk at Pearl Harbor.
The film starts somewhere in the Midwest, where two kids named Danny(Rielly McClendon) and Rafe(Jesse James) are pretending to fly a derelict airplane. They then sneak into Rafe’s father’s crop duster and take off there’s hell to pay of course. Cut to fifteen years later Danny and Rafe are now grown up and played by Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck. It’s Long Island NY and our heroes are just as close and reckless as ever. This gets them in a bit of trouble with their commander with their commander Colonel Jimmy Doolittle(Alec Baldwin) who repremands them and informs Rafe that his application to join the Eagle Squadron and fight the Nazis for Britian has been accepted.
Meanwhile some Army nurses (Catherine Kellner James King Jennifer Garner and Kate Beckinsale) are on a commuter train bound for manhattan, and discuss how one of them Evelyn(Beckinsale) regales them with how she met the man of her dream who just happens to be Rafe. Evelyn and pals meet Rafe Danny and theirs(Colm Feore, William Lee Scott Ewen Bremner Michael Shannon and Matthew Davis) and the two leads go off and act silly and romantic while the rest get lost for a while.
Rafe goes to England and everyone else goes to Pearl Harbor. Fine that was utterly predictable. It’s like Titanic the ship is doomed from the beginning. That Evelyn winds up with Danny is also preordained.
But the romance hokey as it is, has a purpose. It let’s us get away from the astounding stupidity of the top brass that led to the attack in the first place.
We get to see the incredible makeup that makes Jon Voight look almost EXACTLY like President Roosevelt Dan Aykroyd plead with his superiors to do something about the upcoming attack it’s well known that we had the Japanese codes but we didn’t know where it would take place and Petty officer Doris Miller, who would be the first Black to win the Silver Star win a boxing match.
All this while Admiral Yamamoto plans to send the Americans a message we’d never forget.
We get to see ships sink. Big ones, while Titanic had one we get to see the entire Pacific fleet go under The computer effects by Eric Brevig’s second unit does a magnificent job directing the action sequences. You can see every bullet bomb and torpedo. It goes on and on and one almost believes that it’s a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the battle. It’s really, really cool.
When the battle is finally over, we’re exhausted. We’re ready to see how it end but we discover, that like the battle itself the film is only beginning. Okay it’s more than half over but still. We get treated to Pearl Harbor II: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.
The film is three hours long but doesn’t feel it. That’s the true test of a long film. My backside didn’t start hurting once. See it.