Pearl Harbor (2001)

Pearl Harbor follows the story of two best friends, Rafe and Danny, and their love lives as they go off to join the war.

Director:

Michael Bay

Writer:

Randall Wallace

Stars:

Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale, Josh Hartnett

Won 1 Oscar. Another 10 wins & 48 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Ben Affleck	...	Capt. Rafe McCawley
Josh Hartnett	...	Capt. Danny Walker
Kate Beckinsale	...	Nurse Lt. Evelyn Johnson
William Lee Scott	...	Lt. Billy Thompson
Greg Zola	...	Lt. Anthony Fusco
Ewen Bremner	...	Lt. Red Winkle
Alec Baldwin	...	Lt. Col. James Doolittle
Jaime King	...	Nurse Betty Bayer (as James King)
Catherine Kellner	...	Nurse Barbara
Jennifer Garner	...	Nurse Sandra
Jon Voight	...	President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Cuba Gooding Jr.	...	Petty Officer Doris Miller
Michael Shannon	...	Lt. Gooz Wood
Matthew Davis	...	Joe (as Matt Davis)
Mako	...	Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto

Storyline

Pearl Harbor is a classic tale of romance set during a war that complicates everything. It all starts when childhood friends Rafe and Danny become Army Air Corps pilots and meet Evelyn, a Navy nurse. Rafe falls head over heels and next thing you know Evelyn and Rafe are hooking up. Then Rafe volunteers to go fight in Britain and Evelyn and Danny get transferred to Pearl Harbor. While Rafe is off fighting everything gets completely whack and next thing you know everybody is in the middle of an air raid we now know as "Pearl Harbor."

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Plot Keywords:

sunday | air raid | black smoke | japanese military | japanese navy | 

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Taglines:

It takes a moment to change history. It takes love to change lives.

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Genres:

Action | Drama | History | Romance | War

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for sustained intense war sequences, images of wounded, brief sensuality and some language

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Japanese French

Release Date:

25 May 2001 (USA)

Also Known As:

Tennessee

Filming Locations:

Santa Clarita, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$140,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$75,177,654 (USA) (25 May 2001)

Gross:

$198,539,855 (USA) (30 November 2001)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Touchstone Pictures, Jerry Bruckheimer Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

183 min 184 min (director's cut)

Sound Mix:

DTS-8 (70 mm print) DTS Dolby Digital SDDS (8 channels)

Color:

Black and White (archive footage) Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

According to Michael Bay, after the film came out he got a letter from Daniel Martínez, the world's foremost expert on Pearl Harbor and the director of the Pearl Harbor museum. In the letter, Bay says that Martinez wrote, "You got the essence of what happened right."

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Goofs

As the Japanese aircraft attack the smaller fields, we see the pilots and the newsreel cameraman running across the airfield. The cameraman and numerous pilots are gunned down by the Zeros twice.

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Quotes

Evelyn: [voiceover] When the action is over and we look back, we understand both more and less. This much is certain. Before the Doolittle raid, America knew nothing but defeat. After it, there was hope of victory. Japan realized, for the first time, they could lose and began to pull back. America realized, that she would win and surged forward. It was a war, that changed America and the world. Dorie Miller was the first black American to be awarded the Navy Cross. But he would not be the last. He ...

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Crazy Credits

Unusually, Pearl Harbor started without showing the opening Touchstone and Bruckheimer logos; they only showed up after the end credits.

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Connections

Referenced in 30 Rock: 100: Part 1 (2011)

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Soundtracks

Tiny Shoulderpads
Written by Bruce Fowler (as Bruce L. Fowler)

User Reviews

you'd better study the Pearl Harbor tragedy in history books!

Made by the same crew that delivered us "Armageddon" (1998), "Pearl Harbor" is a much less stupid movie than its predecessor and a more ambitious one. You find the actor Ben Affleck in both movies but he's better in "Pearl Harbor" than in "Armageddon" because he manages to avoid third-rate acting.

It isn't sufficient enough to make "Pearl Harbor" one of the finest movies made in 2001 because Michael Bay's movie contains a quite important number of faults. Michael Bay wanted obviously to give to his movie a Hollywood extent and as a consequence it makes the film uninteresting. Moreover this is an unoriginal film because it borrows several sequences or ideas from other movies. For example, as it was the case with "Titanic" (1997), Bay chose to shoot the Pearl Harbor tragedy through the love affair between Kate Beckinsale and Josh Hartnett but this couple can't make the couple DiCaprio-Winslet forget. In short, this device appears colorless.

But the Hollywood side of the movie can be seen at the special effects level. The action sequences are certainly impressive but they are crushed by special effects (when Affleck and Hartnett pilot fighter planes against Japanese pilots, you feel that you are inside a video game!).

From a historical point of view, the movie only suggests an academic vision of the Pearl Harbor tragedy and we learn nothing new.

Nevertheless when the film focuses on the very moving hospital sequences, Michael Bay knows how to create emotion.

At the end, the whole gives a heterogeneous, shaky and conventional movie.