IMDb user comments for
Pearl Harbor (2001) More at IMDbPro »

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 192:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]

Index

1916 comments in total

---

385 out of 587 people found the following comment useful :-
C'est magnifique, c'est ne le guerre pas!, 28 January 2003
Author: hissingsid from London, UK

(Please excuse my French, it's probably wrong)

Roll up, roll up! See the cinematic spectacle of 2001! See the horrible deaths of 2500 or so people commemorated by a film about two guys who fly fast planes really fast. See them go ZOOOOOOOOM, see them go WHIIIIZZZZ! See them reprise the 'flypast and debriefing' scenes from Top Gun. Watch the beautiful love story unfold. See the true love two people have for one another tested and broken when Kate Beckinsale comes between them.

See a fine young actor reduced to playing Token Black Guy. Watch as he fights to prove he's more than a Token Black Guy, even though he's given so little to do that he ends up as nothing more than a Token Black Guy (even though, unlike the two guys in the planes, Token Black Guy actually existed).

Watch the awful bombing of a military target. Watch the heroic bombing of a city. Watch Jon Voigt recreate Peter Sellars' unforgettable character Dr. Strangelove.

Watch the whole reality of war, and the lives and deaths therein trivialised to make a Big Dumb Action Movie that thinks it's some kind of ghastly tribute to the American dead of December the 7th.

Or better still... don't!

On the other hand, if you want an unrealistic film with ponderously paced romance, fighter planes zooming all over the place and nice explosions, check this out. It's a lot of fun. Just don't take it seriously - you'll only encourage them!

---

122 out of 162 people found the following comment useful :-
The most expensive B-movie ever made, 9 February 2006

Author: Gabriel Garcia from Knoxville, Tennessee

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Pearl Harbor is a monstrous, costly and utterly disrespectful abomination of film with pretensions of serious emotional weight and proper historical context. With the cost of the movie comparable to the damage costs of the actual Dec. 7, 1941, attack, more attention should've been paid to the script and research instead of all the models and gasoline for an attack sequence that, while spectacular, was more appropriate for a Star Wars clone or a video game than an actual World War II-era film.

And that's about the only "positive," if you can call it that, of that hack Michael Bay's Oscar-bait project. Many history buffs have ripped the movie from the angle of historical inaccuracy and omission. Assuming that Pearl Harbor is not meant to be a documentary, but a work of historical fiction, lack of historical accuracy and comprehensiveness is by far the least significant of Pearl Harbor's problems, per se, although such blatant historical carelessness certainly starts to say a lot about the movie as a whole.

But, if Pearl Harbor's aim was to be a work of fiction, it has also miserably failed at that. It fails as literature, and it fails as a film. Pearl Harbor tries to be an amalgamation of three past classic movies on the subjects it covers: 1) From Here to Eternity, a clever and well acted telling of the stories of several characters' romantic pursuits and personal struggles right before the attack on Pearl Harbor disrupted everything, 2) Tora! Tora! Tora!, a mostly factual, well balanced depiction of the planning and execution of the actual Pearl Harbor attack with vintage cinematography, and 3) Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a meticulously detailed depiction of the Doolittle Raid with a schmaltzy but genuine love subplot involving one actual soldier and his wife. But Pearl Harbor falls far short of all three aforementioned films on not only their own terms, but simply as movies.

Instead of From Here to Eternity's clever dialogues and personal plot twists and romantic moments dripping alternately with irony and genuine warmth, Pearl Harbor wastes its first hour and a half of screen time setting up a sophomoric love triangle that could have been ripped straight from daytime television soap operas and trash talk shows.

The triangle involves two generically glamorous flyboys, played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett, who have been friends since childhood. Even their names, Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, are mundane. Rafe (Affleck) falls in love with a nurse who presides over his physical named Evelyn (played by Kate Beckinsale), who is also generically glamorous. Rafe and Evelyn spend the next hour or so exchanging pallid lines of dialogue that try too hard to hammer into the audience that, yes, they are in love. Sort of like Shakespeare or Petrarch without any brains and about four centuries too late. In any case, Rafe goes to Britain to fly for the Royal Air Force, where he faces serious butt-kissing from the Brits in a disgustingly patronizing depiction of both British and Americans, and gets shot down over London. But (who didn't see this coming) he lives.

But Evelyn thinks he's dead. And so does Danny (Hartnett). After the token few minutes of mourning, Danny and Evelyn fly above Hawaii and then make it like rabbits under parachutes, invoking obvious parallels to Titanic's "I'm flying" scene followed by good ol' shagging in a car backseat. More faux-sonnet dialogue follows. Then, just like clockwork, Rafe comes back, poor Evelyn is caught in the middle, and Danny and Rafe fight Jerry Springer-style. Then it gets interrupted by the spectacular but oddly fake and inhuman money siphon ... er ... I mean, attack sequence characterized by CGI copies of trapped and screaming people.

Meanwhile, Pearl Harbor occasionally alternates to shots of somber-looking Japanese spies and soldiers planning the attack, all accompanied by evil-sounding music, going out of the way to make the Japanese look like devious souls out for revenge because America wouldn't give them their oil (convenient partial reasoning). Then, in an attempt to make the Japanese appear somewhat remorseful, the script calls for Admiral Yamamoto to utter his famous "brilliant man" and "sleeping giant" lines.

After the attack, Jon Voight does a wonderful impression of Peter Sellers' Dr. Strangelove. Only problem is, he was supposed to be Franklin D. Roosevelt.

O, and as for Rafe and Danny? They've sort of made up. Heck, during the attack, they even team up to presumptuously usurp the roles of the two historical heroes of the Pearl Harbor attack, Lts. George Welch and Kenneth Taylor, who took to the skies and shot down anywhere from six to 10 Japanese planes.

Then our omnipresent plastic heroes listen in on a Top Gun-esquire rah-rah by Alec Baldwin's interpretation of Col. Jimmy Doolittle, which leads into a half-baked annotation of the historical Doolittle Raid, which has the threefold purpose of making sure our two heroes achieve good ol' American vengeance on the Japanese, to slap some convenient closure on our three-hour General Hospital episode (in case you couldn't figure it out, Danny dies, and Rafe and Evelyn live happily ever after with the parachute baby Danny Jr.), and to make me wonder why this movie was titled "Pearl Harbor" and not "Babes, Bombs and Butt-kicking," or something rather. Then the credits roll, accompanied by a pop song that sounds like a rejected idea for Titanic.

The title "Pearl Harbor" presumes that this movie is the ultimate cinematic authority on the attack. But instead it amounts to little more than a three-hour soap opera with putrid dialogue that has the gall to give credit to generic G.I. Joes for key historical roles. No other work of historical fiction has at the same time taken itself so seriously and managed to show such irreverence both for its subject and for the very craft of film-making.

---

176 out of 284 people found the following comment useful :-
Historically Inaccurate, 9 September 2004

Author: Jen (kiwihazelnut) from Fort Collins, CO

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Ignoring the claims that this movie was so wonderful because Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are "so-o-o-o-o hot," and that the "music was so-o-o-o good," I want to talk about all the historical inaccuracies about this movie. People get the impression that by watching the movie, they will understand not one, but two historical WWII events: Pearl Harbor and Doolittle's Raid.

However, this is just not so. While extra care was given for the attack scene (I think WWII veterans would have crucified the producers if this had not been so), the other smaller details give the watcher a false sense of history. For one thing, no Red Cross Army nurses died (as they portray Betty dying). Also, no US soldier would go to Britain to join the Royal Air Force. The US Army Air Force had a unit (the Flying Tigers) in Britain helping out the RAF, but no US soldier would actually leave his unit to join another country's military (regardless of allies). It would mean a total US military discharge AND rejecting US citizenship. Ben Affleck's character could not have done that, especially when he was not a British citizen.

Also, Ben and Josh Hartnett's characters were fighter pilots. NOT Bomber pilots. The two are very separate things. Ben and Josh could never switch from being fighter pilots to bombers for Doolittle's Raid. The Army Air Force had pilots for all kinds of missions, and fighter pilots stayed fighter pilots, and bombers stayed bombers. Continuing with Doolittle's raid, it did NOT turn the tide for the Americans. It was not a military victory, and little in Tokyo was affected. It only served as propaganda to help the US citizens on the homefront (also, Doolittle's Raid was long after Pearl Harbor and not a revenge mission). Watch this movie if you're into sappy love stories, but NOT if you want to learn about Pearl Harbor (and/or the Doolittle Raid). Few historical facts can be gleaned from this movie.

---

231 out of 400 people found the following comment useful :-
Someone get me a pair of scissors!, 10 July 2001

Author: David Atfield (bits@alphalink.com.au) from Canberra, Australia

What a great film this could have been! The recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor is some of the best film-making ever - an extraordinary and moving sequence made utterly believable by state of the art special effects. It ranks up there with the opening sequence from "Saving Private Ryan" and the sinking of the "Titanic" as one of the most harrowing "disaster" sequences filmed in recent years. But like both those other two films, PEARL HARBOR is desperately in need of a decent script to frame the disaster sequence.

Okay - I could almost accept the hokey old love triangle romantic plot - certainly the stars are great to look at - but the dialogue really sucked: "I don't think I'll ever look at another sunset without thinking of you". Please! And all those hero shots from the ground, and the slow motion love bits, and the soppy music, and the eternal sunsets...

But what this film really needed was an editor! The climax of the film is the attack on Pearl Harbor - an American defeat. But it seems the film-makers decided that the American audience wouldn't be satisfied with this - and so the movie grinds on and on for another hour or so dramatising a revenge attack on Japan. And we're supposed to believe that this attack was fought by the very same guys who were on the ground in Hawaii. I mean we all know that America won the war in the end, so did we really need this long epilogue?

Personally I'd cut out all the Roosevelt and the Japanese high command scenes and concentrate on the experiences of the people on the ground at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese stuff was all completely unbelievable anyway. The sad loss would be the superb performance of Jon Voight as Roosevelt - but maybe they could make another film about him. I'd also end the film after the attack at Pearl Harbor, as the survivors pick up the pieces. So why not have a shorter Director's Cut - a novel concept - that makes this film the great film it could have been. If you like I'll lend the scissors!

---

106 out of 163 people found the following comment useful :-
An utter waste of money, talent and history., 29 January 2005

Author: muertos from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Pearl Harbor is a movie so spectacularly awful that it would be funny if it wasn't so infuriating. There hasn't been a big-budget re-enactment of the Pearl Harbor attack since Tora! Tora! Tora! in 1970, and, due to the utter failure of this movie on every level, it's unlikely it will be attempted again for a long, long time.

The writing is ludicrous. It's a series of situations and set pieces strung together without a single regard given to character development or even plausibility. The acting is beneath contempt. Ben Affleck should never have been let anywhere near this film, and in the "love" scenes between himself and Kate Beckinsdale, it appears patently obvious that the actors completely detest each other. The attack scene is filmed and edited like a Saturday morning cartoon. And...excuse me...in real life Pearl Harbor was a DEFEAT. There was none of the stupid garbage with slick fighter jocks dogfighting Japanese Zeros. This film makes it look like a victory! And, excuse me...FDR could not stand up by himself. The scene in the cabinet room where he rises from his chair was simply laughable.

This film is beyond bad. It is insulting. It's a 6-year-old's coloring book passed off as history. Aside from that, it's probably the limpest, shoddiest big-budget "epic" produced in the last 10 years. The day it opened in theaters was truly a day of infamy.

---

77 out of 117 people found the following comment useful :-
Abominable, abysmal, atrocious, ... and that's just the 'A's, 7 June 2004

Author: andyf52 from Maryland

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Spoilers

To borrow and paraphrase from that great orator and writer, Winston Churchill, 'Never in the annals of human endeavor have so many witnessed the butchering of history by so few.'

I remember a story on a national morning TV news program that was a major promotion for the debut of this huge waste of celluloid. This interview/promotion took place aboard the aircraft carrier that's on permanent display in New York harbor. The major male stars, Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett, along with Producer Jerry Bruckheimer were interviewed by one of the hosts of this TV morning news show. In this interview, all three claimed that they enjoyed talking to veterans and listening to their stories. Well, I don't think they were paying much attention to those vets.

Or at least they decided to ignore reality when it interfered with their script!

Some historical facts that got in the way of Bruckheimer's blockbuster: It doesn't matter how simple WWII aircraft are compared to today's jets. Ask any pilot and he/she can tell you that you just don't go from flying American P-40 fighters one day, go to England and jump into the cockpit of a British Spitfire fighter and start shooting down HIGHLY EXPERIENCED, COMBAT VETERAN German PILOTS the next! (I don't care that even a blind pig can find the occasional acorn!) Each aircraft's handling qualities, e.g., speed, max altitude, rate of climb, rate of dive, turning, etc., are different. In other words, a pilot has to be TRAINED on that aircraft! To ask us to believe that Affleck's character, who hadn't seen REAL aerial combat prior to England, can shoot down experienced German fighter pilots the VERY FIRST TIME HE STRAPS ON A 'SPIT' is not only LAUGHABLE, it's insulting to the REAL pilots who fought and died in the 'Battle of Britain.'

The famous 'Doolittle Raid' took place on April 18, 1942 - a scant 4-1/2 months after the Pearl Harbor attack. Yet, we're supposed to believe that not only can Affleck's character IMMEDIATELY master unfamiliar aircraft (forgetting that a B-25 is a MULTI-ENGINE BOMBER no less for the moment!), apparently so can Josh Hartnett's character. It took EXPERIENCED B-25 bomber crews about that long to train for this extremely hazardous raid on Japan (January 1942 to April 18, 1942). No way in the world could P-40 fighter pilots be chosen to fly B-25 bombers in the 'Doolittle Raid!'

What I don't understand is that since Bruckheimer was obviously not interested in historical accuracy, in addition to Affleck's character's superhuman abilities of shooting down EXPERIENCED Germans pilots over England and BATTLE TESTED Japanese pilots over Pearl Harbor, rescuing sailors trapped in half-sunk ships, giving blood, and eventually taking the war to the Japanese in the 'Doolittle Raid,' why didn't Bruckheimer just have Affleck's character pump-out and raise the Arizona and single-handedly save her crew from their watery grave. Thank goodness there are some things even Bruckheimer can't swallow!

The special effects and battle scenes were great! Yeah, I know. Bruckheimer wasn't shooting a documentary. BUT, if you want an entertaining, more historically accurate dramatic portrayal of the events of, and leading up to, December 7th, 1941, stick with Tora! Tora! Tora! That movie is based upon the work of a historian considered by many to be the top of his field, Gordon Prange. Although Dr. Prange wrote many books on this topic, I believe his book, "At Dawn We Slept" was the basis of Tora! Tora! Tora! As a MEDAL OF HONOR winner, General Doolittle, and the heroic pilots he led on that raid deserved better than the way they were portrayed in Bruckheimer's schlock film. Despite the romance scenes, and when it was filmed, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" is a much more accurate depiction of the famous "Doolittle Raid." At least it's more believable!

Affleck, Hartnett, and Bruckheimer may have listened to WWII veterans, but they did not hear. They did not learn. Nor did they appreciate the immeasurable costs paid by those members of this country's 'greatest generation.'

The only things I recognized as historically accurate about this film were: 1) the US was attacked at Pearl Harbor by Japan on December 7th, 1941; 2) the US Army did fly P-40s; 3) British pilots did do combat with Germans in the skies over England during the 'Battle of Britain;' 4) some British pilots did crash into the Channel; 5) Cuba Gooding's character, a black mess cook, DID shoot down Japanese planes even though he received no gunnery training; and 6) Doolittle did lead a force of 16 US Army B-25 bombers from the carrier USS Hornet against Japan. I can't speak to any accuracies about the nurses, or their quick thinking, e.g., writing with lipstick on the foreheads of the wounded.

The only way I'd own a copy of this film is if someone accidentally gave it to me as a gift.

---

108 out of 180 people found the following comment useful :-
Based on a true story...only the names and events have been changed, 15 March 2006

Author: rude_boy_mick from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Pearl Harbor is without a doubt the worst world war 2 film of the past decade! The plot was lackluster and unoriginal, the acting pathetic for the most part, and the history inaccurate.

It seems to be more preoccupied with portraying America in the best light than accurately depicting the facts. The love story is out of place and pathetic.

At the end of the film is a 5 minute rant about why America is supposedly great; it actually says "after pearl harbour all America knew was victory", obviously the writers had never heard of Vietnam.

The only good aspect was the special effects, but they could never make up for this absolutely dire film.

My only regret (apart from wasting 2 and a half hours of my life watching the film) is that I can't award zero out of 10!

---

83 out of 133 people found the following comment useful :-
Someone hand me a sick bucket...., 7 April 2005

Author: mr_me

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Oh dear, what a waste of time and money and more importantly, three hours of my life. Titanic with bombs, only take away James Cameron and any sign of talent, story, pacing and throw in historical inaccurancies, clichés and a story that will make you want to throw up from all the cheesy moments.

The film is really divided into three parts. The first part, the love story, the two best friends and of course the girl. Then one hour later, develop a love triangle, wow, Hollywood has never seen anything like that before! (sarcasm intended) Also add several less important characters and bit parts that you hope will die in the bombing sequence that you know is coming, unfortunately, only one of them does.

Finally, the second hour, the bombing sequence begins. It's good to begin with, its good fun, the only part of the movie thats bearable. The special effects are great along with good fight sequences. Unfortunately, they even managed to spoil that with a ridiculous scene in which the two main characters fly around and save Pearl Harbor by shooting down two pilots.

Now you think that with the bombing sequence over, the end of the film is near, you're just about to get your coat and run out of the movies, when all of a sudden, you're subjected to one of the most pointless hours I have ever seen in a movie, in which the survivors, and only the survivors for some reason, fly over to Japan to get revenge. Oh dear. At this point, the movie has completely lost the plot, the acting is horrendous, the editing and direction terrible, and I have lost interest in all the characters. The story has been completely suffocated with the ridiculous sub-plots.

Avoid this film at all costs. Three hours of pointless clichés, cheesy scenes, unlikeable characters, historical inaccuracies and the worst direction I have ever seen. This film could have been so more, or less.

---

90 out of 159 people found the following comment useful :-
Bombed, torpedoed, sunk, 4 February 2006
Author: SteveThomp from Victoria, Australia

Pearl Harbor will appeal to many with its big names, its schmaltzy and contrived love story, its special effects for their own sake and its simplistic appeals to patriotism, morality and retaliatory violence. Yet the reality is that its just another installment in Hollywood's ongoing butchery of history for its own corporate ends: film-makers who use events like the bombing of Pearl Harbor want to exploit its sentiment but feel no duty to do it justice historically. The tepid disclaimer offered by its makers - that this movie is actually a 'love story' and not a docu-drama - should be swallowed by no-one (why then call the movie "Pearl Harbor" and not "Hearts across Oahu"?) The disappointing outcome of this misrepresentation is that many, if not most will leave the cinemas or turn off the DVD and think "So, that was what it was all about..!" Actually, it was probably nothing like this.

The movie goes for about three hours when less than two would have sufficed, and the surplus length can be attributed to both prolonged scenes of the bombing raid on Pearl Harbor itself, and the set-up of perhaps the most pointless and pitiful love triangle in cinematic history. Beckinsale, Affleck and Hartnett tango around each other for far too long, combining disinterested looks with utterly ridiculous platitudes and emotional observations (in fact the whole screenplay for this movie ranges from mediocre to utterly atrocious). Inserting a love story into an epic war movie is tantamount to breast enhancement surgery: get it wrong and the whole package will look utterly ridiculous - and this one was done by a butcher, not a master surgeon. Perhaps the screen writing budget was instead spent on the special effects and bombing scenes, which were too long and offered nothing except a half-hour of noise, cacophony and flying things. It added no meaning or redemption to the film - and by this stage it was craving for it, after the romantic interludes.

Of course every Hollywood blockbuster needs absolution and resolution, so there's some of that. Cuba Gooding Jnr. plays a black USN cook who, in the heat of battle, mans a gun and shoots some Jap planes, despite being racially excluded from such duties (those canny Afro-Americans, they're always fighting for rather than against their oppressors). Alec Baldwin plays an Army officer who leads a token retaliatory raid on Tokyo four months after Pearl Harbor. Jon Voight does a good job of looking and sounding vaguely like FDR, so full of vigor that he at one stage jumps up out of his wheelchair. Even the Japanese who plan and lead the Pearl Harbour attack, when hearing of its success, seem aware that their actions have doomed them to inevitable defeat. It's all enough to gladden the heart of the most retrospectively-patriotic American. A shame though that reality and patriotism don't make good bedfellows, and that this appalling movie is a simple-minded sideshow that doesn't honor the Pearl Harbor dead, it downright embarrasses them.

---

54 out of 88 people found the following comment useful :-
Sappy love story, inaccurate history -- In short, *avoid*, 29 July 2008

Author: jmzkeenan from Canada

I heard about this film while it was in production. I heard about how they were going to go out of their way to get all the right aircraft to film so things would look right. I heard how they wanted everything to look as authentic as possible. I heard that the movie would somehow encompass the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor, and the Doolittle Raid (??? - an early warning sign). I heard that they were going to stage the premiere on an aircraft carrier moored in Pearl Harbor, for an audience of Second World War veterans. They even managed to get one of the veterans attending the premiere to say complimentary things about the movie. I knew that special effects technology had advanced enormously since 1970, allowing the filming of things that would have been impossible in the previous big-budget movie about Pearl Harbor, Tora Tora Tora.

So I thought "Given all this, how bad can it be?".

The answer, unfortunately, is AWFUL. This may not be Hollywood at its worst, but it's pretty close.

I don't know the origin of the phrase "Titanic with bombs" for describing this film, but it's pretty apt. One difference is that Bay and Bruckheimer together don't add up to James Cameron. Both films feature trite, sappy, predictable love stories (with every chestnut in the Hollywood Cliché guide clearly in evidence) layered over a real-life, tragic event. However, although I don't particularly like Titanic, I have some respect for Cameron's success in reproducing the appearance of the RMS Titanic and the events of the Titanic sinking on screen. I am prepared to watch Titanic (while fast-forwarding over the love story bits) just to see the history parts.

Pearl Harbor fails this test. The portion of the film featuring the attack on Pearl Harbor comes off like a video game -- Lots of sound and fury, but no realism whatsoever. The problem here is that this is not only a real event, but an event of pivotal importance in the history of the United States. Worse yet, the event is still within living memory. How will we feel in 2061, when a director decides to make a movie about September 11, 2001, and casually re-arranges the events of that day to make the resulting film "more entertaining/more commercial/more appealing to mass audiences"? Do you feel sick even contemplating that possibility? That's how I suspect that veterans of the actual attack on Pearl Harbor feel about this movie. The late Brigadier General Kenneth Taylor, one of the pilots who did in real life what Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett portray on screen described the film as "a piece of trash...over-sensationalized and distorted."

Watch Tora Tora Tora instead. It's not perfect, but it's a pretty accurate telling of what really happened at Pearl Harbor. (Tellingly, Tora, Tora, Tora used veterans like General Taylor as advisers to make sure that they got most of the details right). A newer film with improved special effects is not necessarily a better film.

---

---

Page 1 of 192:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]

Add another comment

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Ratings	Awards
Newsgroup reviews	External reviews	Parents Guide
Official site	Plot keywords	Main details
Your user comments	Your vote history