Romanticized History
Won't Earn Pearl Harbor Any Medals

Make no mistake. Pearl Harbor, the latest offering from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay, is not a history lesson. Anyone who is expecting to see the gritty realism of Saving Private Ryan or the historical drama of Schindler's List will be disappointed. If audiences go to see a "historically"-wrapped love story (a la Titanic) they will most likely be pleased... mentally undernourished, but pleased.

There is only one reason to see Pearl Harbor: pure escapism. The story is dredged up from the bottom of the Hollywood barrel. Two boyhood friends (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) grow up to serve in the Army Air Corps on the brink of World War II. Along the way, they fall in love with the same woman, a nurse (Kate Beckinsale) who finds herself torn between the two young men. It's sappy and schmaltzy, unbefitting a film named after such a pivotal moment in our nation's history.

Herein lies the main fault in Pearl Harbor: it relies on a fabricated love story when history itself couldn't give us a better story to tell. (This is the same argument I had with people regarding Titanic.) While I appreciate an afternoon at the movies as much as anyone, I find that there are times when Hollywood misses the big picture (no pun intended). There is nothing wrong with telling a true story, and if you're going to title your film Pearl Harbor -- and release it over Memorial Day weekend -- then the focus of the movie should be on the real event.

Where is the sense of history? While there are certainly nods to historical figures, including serviceman Dorie Miller (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), these moments are often just window dressing. This film should have been more involved with the events of the day -- the politics, the economics, the world climate -- than the lives of two fictional fly-boys from Tennessee. I'm not asking for something off the History Channel, just a story that is more fact than fiction.

Likewise, the film's previews led me to believe this would be both historical and epic. Where is the sense of epic grandeur promised us? When I first saw the preview in which Japanese Zeroes flew low over Hawaii accompanied by a sweeping instrumental score and the voice-over of Roosevelt's "infamy" speech, I was breathless. By the time I saw this film, those scenes had been repeated so many times that they lost their impact on me. The only thing that remained was the repetitious horror of death and destruction.

There are some bright moments in the film. Alec Baldwin turns in a surprisingly strong performance as Col. Jimmy Doolittle. Likewise, the ever popular and versatile Mako plays Japanese Admiral Yamamoto with reserved dignity. My favorite moments in the movie came not on the battlefield, but in the wonderful performance of Jon Voight as President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His courage and conviction shined through as a beacon for America in those early dark days of war. Voight's performance captures that ironic strength in a physically disabled man.

Bruckheimer and Bay understand action. With an assortment of films to their credit that rely more on explosions than exposition, is it any wonder that Pearl Harbor looks and feels more like a summer action movie than a historical drama? Bay's direction is intriguing at times, especially in the aerial fight scenes. But his touch is unwieldy when it comes to more human moments. His gauzy filtered view of the hospital at Pearl Harbor is both annoying and unnecessary. Watching it, I didn't know if he was trying to emphasis the dreamlike quality of the horror, or if he was just covering up the brutality to earn a PG-13 rating.

Pearl Harbor is marketed to young boys who probably don't know the first thing about World War II, and to women who couldn't care less about the intricacies of war (yes, I'm stereotyping). This isn't a movie for the veterans who fought and died for our nation. It's for the masses who don't remember our country at war, and who are too wrapped up in their summer vacations to be burdened by anything resembling reality.

MY RATING: 4 out of 10.

RATED: PG-13
RUN TIME: 183 min.