Pearl Harbor

Before the infamy, let’s get some previews under our belts.

(Don’t touch me there!) TOMB RAIDER–I loves me some Angelina! And dear ol’ dad’s in it, too. The game is great. But, will the movie be the new millennium’s version of Indiana Jones? Or will it just be The Mummy? I really hope it’s good and I’ll be in line to see it. I see it more as a comic book movie than a video game movie. Don’t ask me why, but that’s just the way it is. Maybe it’s because Lara Croft is more like a comic book hero than a video game pixel. I dunno.

AMERICA’S SWEETHEART–What do you get when you take Hollywood’s most conventional leading lady (Julia Roberts) and pair her with its least conventional leading man (John Cusack) in a story more conventional than a group of Star Trek geeks? A movie that looks like it could be total crap if it weren’t for the fact that John was in it. It’s about a Hollywood couple (Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones-Douglas) who break up on and off screen causing people to avoid their movies. Enter new girl Julia who John falls for (of course). Re-enter old girl who makes life a living hell. It’s The Philadelphia Story in Hollywood!

Whatever.

THE PRINCESS DIARIES–Julie Andrews: Good. Anne Hathaway: Who? Rehash of My Fair Lady/Pygmalion: Bad. Garry Marshall: Bad. Very bad. Must avoid.

ATLANTIS–I know that Disney is an evil empire and I’m supposed to hate them to be cool, but I’m also supposed to think that Steven Spielberg is an over-payed, over-hyped hack, so fuck that. I love Disney’s animated flicks. If they’re in good form, they’re amazing (Pinocchio, Aladdin, Jungle Book, Mulan). When they’re bad they’re still pretty entertaining…or at least interesting (Black Cauldron, Aristocats, Great Mouse Detective). This, being a PG-rated animated Disney flick, looks like it could be a great big flop for the Mouse House. After all, the last time they tried that was The Black Cauldron. And their last flick, The Emperor’s New Groove, didn’t do so well. However, the animation looks awesome and the story looks better the BC. I’ll be there. But I’ll buy a kid’s ticket so I don’t give them too much money.

A.I.–The more trailers I see for this movie the more excited a get. Yes, it’s Spielberg doing Pinocchio, but it’s also Spielberg doing Kubrick doing Pinocchio. I’m all for it. And it looks like Steve’s actually trying to do a Stan impression. And we all know that Haley Joel Osment can play a robot because he IS a robot. It’ll be interesting to see how it comes out. I can’t wait.

And now, for a film that will live…

Nevermind. I already made that joke. But it would have been great.

Let me start with a word about Jerry Bruckheimer. The line that I quoted at the beginning of this page pretty much sums up his whole career. Mr. Bruckheimer has been making shit for the past twenty years, but it’s usually very beautiful shit. It’s shit that I would be proud to hang on my wall.

It’s also very exciting shit. Exciting enough to blast you off of the toilet.

I’m going to stop with that right now.

On the IMDb there’s a biography of His Speediness. In case you don’t want to go there to read it, I’ll sum it up for you. It’s a long diatribe about how Jer transports his audience to another world using beautiful images and extremely well-drawn characters who are propelled into very well written and exciting stories. He’s the most successful and critically acclaimed producer in the recent history of film.

The author of this bio was trying to get a job. What really sums up Bruck’s career are the trademarks that are listed on the same page. Those I’ll quote for you:

“Jerry Bruckheimer likes to make movies where things blow up and guns are fired several times.”

“Bruckheimer likes scenes with Money (sic) flying though the air. ”

So he likes to blow shit up and throw money around. Yep. That’s our Jer.

That being said, imagine, if you will, if Jerry decided to make an epic about one of the most significant events in our nation’s history.

Are you scared?

Well, he didn’t screw it up too badly, but he also didn’t win any converts I’m willing to bet.

The real story of this movie centers around three people: Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck), Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) and Evelyn Johnson (the always beautiful Kate Beckinsale). Rafe and Danny have been best friends since they were kids. This we know because of a horrendous introductory scene with the two of them as kids and William Fitchner as Danny’s abusive WWI vet father. This is one of those scenes that has to be seen to be believed. There’s so much emoting going on that you would think that you were on the set of a Tennessee Williams play. VERY bad.

Zip ahead about 15 years. Rafe is a hotshot pilot who can’t get over the fact that he’s the best pilot America has to offer. Danny is a shy pilot who can’t get over the fact that he’s almost as good as Rafe. Evelyn is a nurse who can’t get over the fact that she fell in love with Rafe within about two hours of meeting him. Of course we get no time at all to figure out how they fell in love because we’re only shown a scene with the two of them meeting and then a scene two weeks later when he tells her that he’s shipping out and wants her to wait for him.

But, dammit, they’re in love.

And, since he’s shipping out, we all know what happens. No, they don’t have sex. He gets shot down. Three months later she and Danny fall in love. Rafe comes back. Complications ensue.

Besides making Danny totally evil in most guy’s eyes (I don’t care what you have to do, you never, EVER take your best friend’s girl…even if he’s dead), this also makes for a pretty stupid love story. We’ve got two best friends after the same girl, both trying to figure out what happened. Rafe hates Danny. Danny still loves Rafe. Evelyn loves Rafe, but Evelyn REALLY loves Danny.

Then the bombs start to actually fall. This is where the movie turns into an amazing account of the destruction of a Naval base and the lives that destruction ruins.

Then, after all of that is over and America has started to put the pieces back together, we start another movie. This one is about the retaliation. Now we’re left to wonder which of our two heroes will die. (We all know that they can’t BOTH live. There’s only one girl.)

The cast does a pretty passable job. They’re all solid actors, even the leads. (No matter what a certain friend of mine living in The Land Of The Rising Sun says about Ben, he’s not all that bad. And he probably does better here than he usually does.) Kate, who is always good, is maybe a little less good, but still worthy of a nod. She did, after all, keep her accent at bay. Quite well, I might add. But she does look a little too much like Liv Tyler here. I kept expecting Ben to break out the animal crackers. Thank you, Ben, for not doing that.

The supporting cast was kind of hit or miss, though. Jon Voight was great as FDR, even if his part was a little over-written. Alec Baldwin was quite good as a rather typical colonel who takes the boys under his wing while being tough on them. He should have used his gruff voice, though. Sometimes he sounded a little too pansy to be a real colonel. Cuba Gooding, Jr. was, well, post-Oscar Cuba. He always seems to be playing it up to get another one. But he’s not in the flick nearly as much as they make it seem in the trailer. He’s basically a cook who gets to use a big gun. Good for him. Dan Aykroyd is very good as Captain Thurman, a character who represents all of the men who were trying to crack the Japanese codes. He knew what was going on, but he couldn’t make anyone believe. Mako was also very good as the admiral of the Japanese Air Force, a man who did not want to do what he had to do. He was a peaceful man stuck in a violent world. And last, but certainly not least, Ewen Bremner was good as the stuttering flyboy of the bunch. He was in love with Betty (James King) and, well, he stuttered when he was nervous. That was his whole character, but Ewen played it for all it was worth. And it took me almost the entire movie to realize that he was Spud from Trainspotting!

Michael Bay is almost trying to turn into a filmmaker under Jerry’s nose. The filmmaker he’s trying to be, however, is Spielberg. Tom Sizemore is nearly wasted in a small role as a rough mechanic at Pearl Harbor, but we had to get someone from Saving Private Ryan, right? And the scene where the boys crash and have to start shooting Japanese soldiers looks exactly like the battle scenes in SPR, except not as good or violent. And, if you believe the IMDb, the whole movie was shot using 3-strip Technicolor, which was used back in the 30s and 40s. This gave the film the look of an old classic. Delusions of grandeur.

But all Bruckheimer flicks look the same from Flashdance to Gone In 60 Seconds, so that’s really the last mention of Bay that we need.

And Bruck throws out all the stops in this one. Big, sweeping shots of kids in fields. Crane shots swooping from the ground at Ben’s feet to the air above him. Underwater shots of guys being shot (just like a previously mentioned better WWII flick). Shots that follow bombs into their targets. Big shots that looked like Scarlett looking over the battle grounds outside of Tara. (There were a few too many of those shots for my taste.) And, of course, some great dogfights.

But what’s a little disturbing is the fact that this is almost nothing more but a more expensive version of Top Gun. You had two flyboys who did things like buzzing towers and barrel rolling when they shouldn’t. You had a father figure who took them under his wing (even if Alec wasn’t in the movie as long as Tom Skerrit was in TG). You had a character nearly die because his canopy wouldn’t open. And you had a character named Goose! You’re a sick man, Jer.

And how were the Japanese depicted? Quite well, actually. They were never blood thirsty assholes just trying to kill those stupid Americans. They were people just like our guys who were doing a job that they thought was right. If they were shown as the bad guys…guess what? They were the bad guys! Get over it. It would be a little weird if we, as Americans, couldn’t decide who to be for because the Japanese were so charming.

Randall Wallace, who wrote one of my favorite movies, Braveheart, also wrote this one. He seems to have lost his touch a bit. There are parts that are WAY over written and the first half hour to hour is absolutely ordinary. So predictable and conventional and old-fashioned as to be nearly boring and almost a little painful. This kind of old-fashioned writing worked for me in Titanic (to an extent), but it really didn’t work at all here.

But what really mattered here was not the love story (which is what’s being used to sell it overseas). It’s the battle scene. And that is absolutely amazing. As disgusted as I was with some of the love stuff, the actual attack on Pearl Harbor made the whole three hours worth it. The special effects were even better than those in Titanic, which looked amazing at the time. The pain and violence of the attack came through the screen.

But I find it hard to believe that only two guys got their planes off the ground and they just happened to be best friends.

Then, after this amazing sequence, the movie goes on for another hour. Luckily we get some great dogfight scenes, but we also get an unsatisfying ending. Well, that may not be the best word for it, but I didn’t agree with it.

And speaking of not agreeing, for being a movie whose main hero was a Democratic president, this sure was a Republican movie. Lots of talk about God. (I got a little sick of hearing last rites being read.) Lots of “Hooray for the military” bits.

So, all in all, was this a bad movie? No. It was actually pretty entertaining and that attack sequence was, as I have said many times, amazing. I did enjoy it a lot at times. (And there was lot of shit blowing up!) But the movie as a whole was disappointing in some ways. Was it worth the money? Yes, but I didn’t pay full price.

Go see it, but don’t expect a brilliant piece of filmmaking. And, for God’s sake, walk out before the end credits song starts up! That was excruciating!!