Producer Jerry Bruckheimer evidently couldn't make up his mind whether to make a crappy love story or a crappy war story, so he opted for both. (After all, the actual Pearl Harbor attack didn't have enough drama to stand on its own.) Throw in "actors" like Affleck and Alec Baldwin, and we reach a critical mass of mediocrity.
Pearl Harbor is the story of a young man who overcomes extensive handicaps (larceny, violence, bat-like eyesight, horrific judgment, and lack of acting skills) to become several of America's greatest heroes of World War II.
The "story" opens with a pair of young buddies, Danny and Rafe, back on the farm. Right away, Danny displays his heroic side by stealing an airplane and then committing felony assault against Rafe's dad. We could tell this kid was destined for great things.
Flash forward to the early stages of the War in Europe. Danny (Affleck) and Rafe (Josh Hartnett) are now pilots for none other than aviation legend Jimmy Doolittle (Alec Baldwin). These two cut-ups display that beloved American trait, reckless endangerment, while zipping around in their P-40s. In his rage, Baldwin steals the script from Top Gun and reads the speech James Tolkan made when chewing out "Maverick" and "Goose." As is required in Hollywood's Reality, Danny is then granted his fondest wish, to go fight with the British R.A.F. against the Nazi horde.
In a plot twist I haven't seen since the last time I watched a war movie, Danny is shot down which, for unexplained reasons, worries his girlfriend, Nurse Evelyn Stewart (Kate Beckinsale). Ev, we learn, fell in love with the irascible Danny when he lied to her about his vision and got himself injected twice with a dangerous drug. Once he drops his drawers for Evelyn's needle, though, she decided to hell with regulations: This guy was a pilot! (And possible husband material.)
While we moviegoers are squirming in our seats, consumed by the thought Danny might still be alive, Evelyn gets transferred to Pearl Harbor, along with the horniest nurses outside of a porno flick. (Or inside one, for that matter.)
Here we meet Dorie Miller, a cook's assistent-turned-boxer, portrayed by actual actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. Dorie, it seems, signed up to fight but due to Franklin Roosevelt's policy of "every man in his place," is spending the pre-war scraping corned beef off of mess plates.
With that essential plot line securely in place, the story plods on. Danny is still missing (and presumed dead by anyone with a single-digit I.Q.), but his best friend Rafe is now transferred to Pearl too, where he meets up with Evelyn. In a shocking and ingenious plot development, Rafe falls in love with Evelyn after they decide to re-enact the love scene from future movie From Here to Eternity. In an even more ingenious plot twist, Danny now shows up! Alive, most likely, though with Affleck it's sometimes hard to tell.
Well, Danny Boy is madder than a wet hen that good ol' Rafe is looking out after Ev's goodies, so to speak. So he gets drunk, punches Rafe, then the two guys spend a drunken night alone together on the beach, making up.
In an effort to bring this horrible mess to a close, the Japanese then attack Hawaii. Despite tremendous shelling, torpedoing, and strafing, they manage to kill over 2,000 people but miss Danny and Rafe. They pay for this ineptitude, however, as our two heroes manage to become the only Americans to get airborne and proceed to take out seven Japanese planes (three in a nail-biting game of chicken in which the Keystone Japs manage to crash into each other).
Mess-mate Dorie (remember him, the black guy in the movie?) gets his long awaited chance to kill someone legally and steps into an anti-aircraft battery and strafes the destroyer docked next to him as Japanese Zeros fly between the ships.
Well, hold on to your seats. With special effects rivaling some of the better personal computer flight simulators, we watch ships get blown up, planes destroyed, and people killed by Imperial Japanese aircraft, hurtling around at what appears to be nearly forty knots. In one stirring moment, the Zeros strafe a bevy of our man-hunting nurses, who display their patriotism by refusing to flirt with the Jap pilots as their planes lumber past.
This was one of the greatest attack sequences I've ever seen in this movie. If these excerpts don't prickle your skin, you have no soul:
"Let's get these Jap suckers!"
"Whee-hoo, good shootin', boys!"
"Oh, I'm on your ass, now!" (Danny talking to a Jap, not to Rafe.)
I'm sure the attack seemed to go on forever to it's victims. I can relate.
When the marauders finally turn for home, our heroes, Danny and Rafe, land their planes and join back up with the rest of their buddies, who are doing their part amid the chaos, flames, and screams by smoking cigarettes and reminiscing.
Meanwhile, Nurse Evelyn is working her 34-inch butt off saving lives. The hospital is filled with dead and dying, wounded and burned. My stomach churned with nausea during this scene, primarily because director Michael Bay handed the camera over to Otis, the town drunk. This footage would have been easier to view if the camera had been repeatedly bounced off a trampoline.
Well, the United States ain't gonna take this sitting down, not even polio-stricken President Roosevelt, who inspires his staff by showing he was faking all along. A plan is put forth.
Weeks transpire, or so it seems, and Danny and Rafe get secret orders to report back to the States. When Evelyn confronts the packing Danny, he tells her his mission is classified and no matter what, he can't tell her he's been assigned to a Top Secret mission with James Doolittle and is heading back Stateside. She responds by telling him, "Oh yeah, then I can't tell you I'm pregnant with Rafe's love child!"
Of course, she can't stay mad at the big galoot, so she sees him off at the airport, at night, in front of a DC-3's spinning prop. In the widescreen edition, you can just make out Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the corner.
Danny and Rafe soon discover that the U.S. Army has hundreds of B-25 bombers but forgot to train anyone to fly them. So the fighter squadron from Pearl has been reassigned for the secret mission to bomb Tokyo. Colonel Actlittle then gives his crew a speech that was so moving, so inspirational, Alec Baldwin nearly emoted right there on screen.
Soon, our intrepid flyboys are on their way to Japan, and the 16 B-25s are launched from the deck of the U.S.S. Hornet and sent into the Empire. Held captive by the drama unfolding onscreen, and locked movie exits, we watch as the planes bear down on their targets.
Back in Hawaii, resourceful Evelyn, now privy to secret information about America's most critical war effort to date, convinces an Intelligence Officer to let her listen to the play-by-play of the attack. Apparently, our fleet found it more important to keep their broadcast ratings up than to maintain radio silence. No one seems overly concerned that an uncleared civilian is in their midst, and she listens with bitten lip as the drama unfolds.
The planes are at their targets. Danny shouts the spine-tingling words, "All right boys, let's knock their clocks off!", letting Col. Doolittle know it was time to attack. The bombs drop, explosions rage, and with dramatic lines like, "God, Jesus, what--shit!" our heroes pull out for mainland China and hope of rescue.
Well, if you've seen Bridges of Toko-Ri you know that ain't gonna happen. Danny quickly becomes the first American pilot to be shot down piloting both a fighter and a bomber. The Japs immediately surround them. Danny and his team of fighter jocks-turned-bomber jocks are nearly out of ammo. Will this be the end of our hero?
No! Because at that moment, Han Solo, er, Rafe comes hurtling down in his B-25 bomber, strafing the Japs and miraculously killing every single one of them without hitting any Americans. Incredible shooting--assuming, of course, he wasn't aiming for Danny.
Rafe forgets to pull back on that steering wheel thingy in front of him and promptly crashes nearby, giving the buddies a chance to end the movie together. Danny rushes to his side and discovers to his amazement that Rafe isn't mortally wounded. It seems both our heroes will survive, at least to anyone who has never seen a motion picture before.
Sure enough, before you can say, "Well, who'd a thunk it?" another Japanese patrol shows up. They surround the Americans, rifles pointed at each Allied breast. One of the captors produces a huge, elongated block of wood (standard carry equipment for Japanese infantry, I guess) and proceeds to tie poor Jesus, er, Rafe to it. Danny decides there is no way BOTH of them will get out of this damned movie alive, so he grabs a nearby .45 and plugs a couple of the Japs before realizing a .45, even fully loaded, doesn't hold enough rounds to kill all the enemy. Out of bullets, Danny faces certain death as a Japanese soldier turns his rifle to him, but in a scene right out of (reader: insert movie of your choice here _____), Rafe leaps in front of the gun and gets killed.
Well, this distracts the other half-dozen armed, trained Japanese infantrymen who have been fighting against the Chinese for years, and our unarmed, prone Americans quickly overpower them, killing them by clever use of one of their own grenades, which due to some manufacturing defect is designed to kill only Japanese, leaving any Americans standing nearby unscathed.
Danny cries all over the dying Rafe, softening his friend's imminent death with the knowledge that Rafe's girl is pregnant so that he, Danny, will get both her AND Rafe's kid. Rafe decides any world that would let that happen, or let Affleck get $10 million for a movie, isn't worth living in and dies.
New scene: Evelyn is dressed to party, waiting on the tarmac for her hero(es) to return in glorious victory. The plane lands, all the lesser-paid actors depart, and we get our fifteenth slow motion shot of Ben Affleck straightening up and posing heroically. This being a bad-news, bad-news sort of day for her, she then watches the pine box containing Josh Hartnett's career being lowered from the aircraft.
Agonizing seconds pass before we see her cavorting on the farm after the war, with Danny and her bastard son, destined to live happily ever after.
At least, until the reviews come in.
I would have given it more vacuums, but I ran out of them after A.I.