[quote=“Ordell Rodriguez”][quote=“F.W.”]pearl harbor is not underrated. it’s a huge pile of shit.[/quote]
Whomever posted that Pearl Harbor is underrated please defend your point. I need to understand the reasoning that arrives at this conclusion.
Whoa, that sounds kinda pretentious ;D[/quote]
I really don’t understand why people think it is such an awful movie.
A common complain is that it has historical inaccuracies, but if I want to learn historical facts, I’d go and watch a documentary or read a book about the event. The movie is historical fiction and people complaining about historical inaccuracies are like those who bash Inglourious Basterds for the same reasons. They are approaching both films from the wrong perspective.
Others complain that it “disrespects” the victims of the event. I really don’t see how the movie even comes close to doing that.
It seems that people were just expecting a movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor and ended up being disappointed because the movie is a love story set in the era which shows how war in general and the attack in particular affects the lives of the characters. However, the movie is also about the attack and a good 40 minutes of it is the attack itself. Yet what goes before and after the attack gives a very human face to the suffering and aftermath. It really makes you feel for the characters. It is this which in my opinion raises Pearl Harbor above just a war film or action flick.
I am not a fan of Affleck or Harnett but I think they both did a good job with their roles and found their friendship to be believable. It very much avoided the banal cliche of two best friends turning into enemies because of a girl.
While people complain that the first hour of the movie, where the characters fall in love, is too long, I actually felt that it should have been developed a bit more. In particular the relationship between Affleck and Beckingsale felt a bit rushed and a couple of scenes which had the potential to become quite memorable, are not allowed to blossom (seeing the sunset from the plane, for example). It is here that I think the movie loses a couple of points.
Much has been said about how the attack is done and how good it is, so I think that’s something even critics of the movie agree with. The shots are very realistic and the cinematography is excellent all set to an epic soundtrack. There are very moving takes such as the planes flying over the baseball field and the children but my favorite is the one where the first bomb is dropped which gives you an overhead view of the bomb as it falls down into a ship. Very impressive stuff.
The building tension leading to the attack where we see the soldiers sleeping without their uniforms, people looking up at the airplanes in wonder, while others are investigating and trying to figure out what the japs are up to until a bomb going under water heads straight into a ship and we get a shot of two men painting the ship blowing up is very well done. The jumping back and forth between the scenes in the ship and those at the hospital was nicely paced and very emotional. The brief part where Jennifer Garner’s character is desperate looking for medical supplies in a cabinet and then just drops everything in the floor shaking and how that is set to a rather blurred image with echoing voices (as are all the hospital shots) perfectly captures the desperation and helplessness people must have felt in that situation.
In short, as this is turning into a review, I laughed, was intrigued, felt sad, felt excited and was downright entertained by Pearl Harbor. I watched it recently (I had seen it only once in 2001) and was as emotionally moving and good as I remember it back then, if not more so. Overall I think the movie is underrated and gets more flack than it deserves.