Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor wants to be two films at once. One is a love story about two fighter pilots and a Navy nurse. The other is a recreation of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The film runs 183 minutes and never decides which one it cares about more. The result was a box office success that critics mostly disliked.
Trailer, via Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers.
Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker
The film opens in 1923 Tennessee, where best friends Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker play in the back of a biplane owned by Rafe’s father, pretending to be combat airmen. By 1941 they are first lieutenants in the US Army Air Force under Major Jimmy Doolittle. Ben Affleck plays Rafe; Josh Hartnett plays Danny. Bay directed from a script by Randall Wallace.
The friendship is the film’s one sturdy beam. It carries the first act further than the romance does.
Evelyn Johnson Signs Off
Kate Beckinsale plays Evelyn Johnson, the nurse who signs off Rafe’s medical exam despite his dyslexia. The two start a relationship. Four weeks later they dance at a nightclub, then take a borrowed police boat into New York Harbor. Rafe then shocks Evelyn by saying he has joined the Eagle Squadron, an RAF unit for American volunteer pilots during the Battle of Britain, and leaves the next day.
The film’s tagline promises a great deal.
It takes a moment to change history. It takes love to change lives.
Pearl Harbor believes that. It just cannot make the audience believe it alongside.
Shot Down Over the English Channel
During a mission to intercept a Luftwaffe bombing raid, Rafe is shot down over the English Channel and presumed killed in action. Danny and Evelyn mourn together, and that grief turns into a new romance between them.
Then, on the night of Dec. 6, Evelyn finds Rafe standing outside her door. He survived the drowning and months trapped in Nazi-occupied France. He learns about Danny and Evelyn, leaves for the Hula bar, and gets into a fight with Danny when Danny comes to reconcile. They drive away, dodging the military police, and fall asleep in Danny’s car.
That is the setup. It takes two hours to earn a morning that the film treats as an interruption.
The Attack on Pearl Harbor
On Dec. 7, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacks Pearl Harbor. The US Pacific Fleet is severely damaged, and most of the defending airfields are destroyed before they can launch fighters. The sequence is the reason the film exists, and it is the best thing in it.
Bay’s action work holds up. The visual effects and the action sequences drew praise even from reviewers who disliked everything around them, and the musical score did too. Those are the parts that still function.
Four Oscars and Six Razzies
The film’s reception split in a way that is almost funny. It was nominated for four Academy Awards and won Best Sound Editing. It was also nominated for six Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture. A single film does not normally land on both lists in the same year.
Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Dorie Miller. Jon Voight plays President Roosevelt. Alec Baldwin plays Doolittle. Tom Sizemore and Colm Feore are in the cast as well.
What 183 Minutes Buys
The length is the real problem, and it is not a small one. Pearl Harbor spends its first half on a triangle that never convinces, then spends its second half on a battle that does. The film’s plot includes the Doolittle Raid and the aftermath of the attack, which means the story keeps going well past the moment the title promises.
The historical inaccuracies drew criticism too. The plot is set in a fictionalized version of the attack, and the film treats real events as a backdrop for fictional pilots.
What actually matters here is the split. The battle scenes and the sound work are the work of people who knew what they were doing. The script is the work of people who thought a love triangle could carry a war. It cannot, and 183 minutes is a long time to find that out.
Pearl Harbor is a war film that keeps stopping for a romance, and a romance that keeps stopping for a war. Neither half rescues the other.
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