Pearl Harbor (2001)
Country: US
Technical: col/2.2:1 183m
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding Jnr, Jon Voight, Alec Baldwin, Tom Sizemore
Synopsis:
Two fliers and an army nurse stationed in Hawaii get entangled with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour, and each other.
Review:
By numbers actioner of a very old-fashioned sort, which offers itself as a Saving Private Ryan commemoration/celebration of American sacrifice and resolve respectively, but is deeply compromised by tokenism of one kind or another. You wait an hour and a half while characters out of Top Gun strive to impress and do their duty while mouthing clichés; then comes a ferociously violent attack sequence capped by a suspiciously truncated dogfight sequence in which our boys kick some Japanese butt and come back to tell the tale; then, staggeringly, we have the Independence Day moment in which a desperate mission is flown to mobilise national morale. Preposterously entertaining but also rather insulting, and not just to the Japanese.
Country: US
Technical: col/2.2:1 183m
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding Jnr, Jon Voight, Alec Baldwin, Tom Sizemore
Synopsis:
Two fliers and an army nurse stationed in Hawaii get entangled with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour, and each other.
Review:
By numbers actioner of a very old-fashioned sort, which offers itself as a Saving Private Ryan commemoration/celebration of American sacrifice and resolve respectively, but is deeply compromised by tokenism of one kind or another. You wait an hour and a half while characters out of Top Gun strive to impress and do their duty while mouthing clichés; then comes a ferociously violent attack sequence capped by a suspiciously truncated dogfight sequence in which our boys kick some Japanese butt and come back to tell the tale; then, staggeringly, we have the Independence Day moment in which a desperate mission is flown to mobilise national morale. Preposterously entertaining but also rather insulting, and not just to the Japanese.
Country: US
Technical: col/2.2:1 183m
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding Jnr, Jon Voight, Alec Baldwin, Tom Sizemore
Synopsis:
Two fliers and an army nurse stationed in Hawaii get entangled with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour, and each other.
Review:
By numbers actioner of a very old-fashioned sort, which offers itself as a Saving Private Ryan commemoration/celebration of American sacrifice and resolve respectively, but is deeply compromised by tokenism of one kind or another. You wait an hour and a half while characters out of Top Gun strive to impress and do their duty while mouthing clichés; then comes a ferociously violent attack sequence capped by a suspiciously truncated dogfight sequence in which our boys kick some Japanese butt and come back to tell the tale; then, staggeringly, we have the Independence Day moment in which a desperate mission is flown to mobilise national morale. Preposterously entertaining but also rather insulting, and not just to the Japanese.