Pearl Harbor - The Greatest War Film

Discussion in 'Books, Films, TV, Radio' started by mochnoor, May 24, 2012.

  1. mochnoor

    mochnoor Junior Member

    The Great War Film, And Love Is The Power

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    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."

    Box office
    Pearl Harbor grossed $200 million at the domestic box office and $450 million worldwide. The film was ranked the sixth highest-earning picture of 2001.

    Critical response
    Despite the box office success, critical reaction to Pearl Harbor was mixed to negative, and the film earned only a 25% approval rating on the review-compiling website Rotten Tomatoes based on 166 reviews with an average rating of 4.4/10, making it Bay's second worst reviewed movie to date, losing to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 based on 35 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews." While it earned praise for its technical achievements, the screenplay and acting were popular targets for critics.
    Roger Ebert gave the film one and a half stars and wrote, "The film has been directed without grace, vision, originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them" and criticized its liberties with historical facts: "There is no sense of history, strategy or context; according to this movie, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because America cut off its oil supply, and they were down to an 18-month reserve. Would going to war restore the fuel sources? Did they perhaps also have imperialist designs? Movie doesn't say". Michael Bay responded to Ebert's criticism of his film: "He commented on TV that bombs don't fall like that. Does he actually think we didn't research every nook and cranny of how armor-piercing bombs fell? He's watched too many movies. He thinks they all fall flat — armor-piercing bombs fall straight down, that's the way it was designed! But he's on the air pontificating and giving the wrong information. That's insulting!"
    Nonetheless, on a similar refrain, A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, "Nearly every line of the script drops from the actors' mouths with the leaden clank of exposition, timed with bad sitcom beats". USA Today gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, "Ships, planes and water combust and collide in Pearl Harbor, but nothing else does in one of the wimpiest wartime romances ever filmed."
    In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, "although this Walt Disney movie is based, inspired and even partially informed by a real event referred to as Pearl Harbor, the movie is actually based on the movies Top Gun, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan. Don't get confused".Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine wrote, "Affleck, Hartnett and Beckinsale - a British actress without a single worthy line to wrap her credible American accent around - are attractive actors, but they can't animate this moldy romantic triangle". Time magazine's Richard Schickel criticized the film's love triangle: "It requires a lot of patience for an audience to sit through the dithering. They're nice kids and all that, but they don't exactly claw madly at one another. It's as if they know that someday they're going to be part of "the Greatest Generation" and don't want to offend Tom Brokaw. Besides, megahistory and personal history never integrate here".
    Entertainment Weekly was more positive, giving the film a "B-" rating, and Owen Gleiberman praised the Pearl Harbor attack sequence: "Bay's staging is spectacular but also honorable in its scary, hurtling exactitude ... There are startling point-of-view shots of torpedoes dropping into the water and speeding toward their targets, and though Bay visualizes it all with a minimum of graphic carnage, he invites us to register the terror of the men standing helplessly on deck, the horrifying split-second deliverance as bodies go flying and explosions reduce entire battleships to liquid walls of collapsing metal".
    In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, "here is the ironic twist in my acceptance of Pearl Harbor-the parts I liked most are the parts before and after the digital destruction of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese carrier planes" and felt that "Pearl Harbor is not so much about World War II as it is about movies about World War II. And what's wrong with that?"

    httxxxp://www.theskinnystiletto.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/kate-beckinsale-1.jpg

    Beautiful cast, Beautiful Movie :)
     
  2. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Poor, complete, unadulterated, sheer, utter crap!
     
    DavidW and kopite like this.
  3. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Old Hickory Recon

    Mochnoor, I don't think you will get any takers on that movie being a good flick. It was inadequate on so many levels.
     
  4. chick42-46

    chick42-46 Senior Member

    Dreadful film. Much prefer Tora, Tora, Tora!

    Mind you, I could look at Kate Beckinsale all day long (though I prefer her in skin-tight pvc in the Underworld films!).
     
  5. Jakob Kjaersgaard

    Jakob Kjaersgaard Senior Member

    Ok, now you definitely must be trolling.
     
  6. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Poor, complete, unadulterated, sheer, utter crap!
    Hear Hear. The honorable gentleman from Portugal has the vote of the honorable gentleman from Ireland. That film was pure muck! :lol:
     
    DavidW likes this.
  7. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    Oh dear God, NO! Run away, run away!
     
  8. RemeDesertRat

    RemeDesertRat Very Senior Member

    Dreadful film. Much prefer Tora, Tora, Tora!

    Mind you, I could look at Kate Beckinsale all day long (though I prefer her in skin-tight pvc in the Underworld films!).

    Seconded on all counts! :)

    Although her acting skills are not a patch on her Dads.
     
  9. mochnoor

    mochnoor Junior Member

    Its Holy-wood. haha.
     
  10. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Another loverly Cut and Paste and again Those pilots were wearing the wrong footwear. They were not issued to pilots until after the Enola Straight dropped the B Bomb on Tokyo in 1944.

    That is all.
     
  11. Mike L

    Mike L Very Senior Member

    Footwear fetish Drew?
    Awful film, don't know how it made so much money. I tend to dislike excessive digital imagery in films.
     
  12. wowtank

    wowtank Very Senior Member

    Peal Harbor is so bad that you could not make a worst film if it was the worst film making day of your life and you had a electrified worst film making device.
     
    DavidW likes this.
  13. bamboo43

    bamboo43 Very Senior Member

    Tora, tora, tora for me too, by a country mile.:D
     
  14. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    Peal Harbor is so bad that you could not make a worst film if it was the worst film making day of your life and you had a electrified worst film making device.

    Sorry, I have to disagree because I have seen Plan Nine From Outer Space. Atrocious as Pearl Harbor is, it isn't in the Ed Wood Jr. class.
     
  15. DanielG

    DanielG Senior Member

    Does not hold a candle to '1942'!
     
  16. DoreenC

    DoreenC Member

    Poor, complete, unadulterated, sheer, utter crap!


    x2. One of the worst movies I've ever seen, and "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is included in that list.
     
  17. Recce_Mitch

    Recce_Mitch Very Senior Member

    Tora, tora, tora was definately a better movie

    Cheers
    Paul
     
  18. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Peal Harbor is so bad that you could not make a worst film if it was the worst film making day of your life and you had a electrified worst film making device.
    Epic fail on the attempt at a Blackadder Joke :rolleyes:
     
  19. Marco

    Marco Senior Member

    Mochnoor, all in good humour but you revieled your identity as being female. The one creatures I know who like this film! :rolleyes:

    Mind you, I could look at Kate Beckinsale all day long

    This solution should have been a reason NOT to make that movie:
    Kate Beckinsale - Google zoeken
     
  20. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Does not hold a candle to '1942'!

    Wrong year! Surely you mean 1941 :D

    [YOUTUBE]CPnwlNvwBLI[/YOUTUBE]

    Forget the Pearl Harbor crap, this is the movie to go watch! As authentic and fun as A Night in Casablanca :)
     

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