pearl harbor is the greatest film ever to re-create the events of that sad day in dec. of 1942 not only does this film give amazing details to tell the story to those that could only imagine what went on that historical day but it goes on to tell what america did after to revenge pearl harbor.this film should be included in history classes for all sudents throughout the united states.

Pearl Harbor is a monstrous, costly and utterly disrespectful abomination of film with pretensions of serious emotional weight and proper historical context. With the cost of the movie comparable to the damage costs of the actual Dec. 7, 1941, attack, more attention should've been paid to the script and research instead of all the models and gasoline for an attack sequence that, while spectacular, was more appropriate for a Star Wars clone or a video game than an actual World War II-era film.

And that's about the only "positive," if you can call it that, of that hack Michael Bay's Oscar-bait project. Many history buffs have ripped the movie from the angle of historical inaccuracy and omission. Assuming that Pearl Harbor is not meant to be a documentary, but a work of historical fiction, lack of historical accuracy and comprehensiveness is by far the least significant of Pearl Harbor's problems, per se, although such blatant historical carelessness certainly starts to say a lot about the movie as a whole.

But, if Pearl Harbor's aim was to be a work of fiction, it has also miserably failed at that. It fails as literature, and it fails as a film. Pearl Harbor tries to be an amalgamation of three past classic movies on the subjects it covers: 1) From Here to Eternity, a clever and well acted telling of the stories of several characters' romantic pursuits and personal struggles right before the attack on Pearl Harbor disrupted everything, 2) Tora! Tora! Tora!, a mostly factual, well balanced depiction of the planning and execution of the actual Pearl Harbor attack with vintage cinematography, and 3) Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a meticulously detailed depiction of the Doolittle Raid with a schmaltzy but genuine love subplot involving one actual soldier and his wife. But Pearl Harbor falls far short of all three aforementioned films on not only their own terms, but simply as movies.

Instead of From Here to Eternity's clever dialogues and personal plot twists and romantic moments dripping alternately with irony and genuine warmth, Pearl Harbor wastes its first hour and a half of screen time setting up a sophomoric love triangle that could have been ripped straight from daytime television soap operas and trash talk shows.

The triangle involves two generically glamorous flyboys, played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett, who have been friends since childhood. Even their names, Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, are mundane. Rafe (Affleck) falls in love with a nurse who presides over his physical named Evelyn (played by Kate Beckinsale), who is also generically glamorous. Rafe and Evelyn spend the next hour or so exchanging pallid lines of dialogue that try too hard to hammer into the audience that, yes, they are in love. Sort of like Shakespeare or Petrarch without any brains and about four centuries too late. In any case, Rafe goes to Britain to fly for the Royal Air Force, where he faces serious butt-kissing from the Brits in a disgustingly patronizing depiction of both British and Americans, and gets shot down over London. But (who didn't see this coming) he lives.

But Evelyn thinks he's dead. And so does Danny (Hartnett). After the token few minutes of mourning, Danny and Evelyn fly above Hawaii and then make it like rabbits under parachutes, invoking obvious parallels to Titanic's "I'm flying" scene followed by good ol' shagging in a car backseat. More faux-sonnet dialogue follows. Then, just like clockwork, Rafe comes back, poor Evelyn is caught in the middle, and Danny and Rafe fight Jerry Springer-style. Then it gets interrupted by the spectacular but oddly fake and inhuman money siphon ... er ... I mean, attack sequence characterized by CGI copies of trapped and screaming people.

Meanwhile, Pearl Harbor occasionally alternates to shots of somber-looking Japanese spies and soldiers planning the attack, all accompanied by evil-sounding music, going out of the way to make the Japanese look like devious souls out for revenge because America wouldn't give them their oil (convenient partial reasoning). Then, in an attempt to make the Japanese appear somewhat remorseful, the script calls for Admiral Yamamoto to utter his famous "brilliant man" and "sleeping giant" lines.

After the attack, Jon Voight does a wonderful impression of Peter Sellers' Dr. Strangelove. Only problem is, he was supposed to be Franklin D. Roosevelt.

O, and as for Rafe and Danny? They've sort of made up. Heck, during the attack, they even team up to presumptuously usurp the roles of the two historical heroes of the Pearl Harbor attack, Lts. George Welch and Kenneth Taylor, who took to the skies and shot down anywhere from six to 10 Japanese planes.

Then our omnipresent plastic heroes listen in on a Top Gun-esquire rah-rah by Alec Baldwin's interpretation of Col. Jimmy Doolittle, which leads into a half-baked annotation of the historical Doolittle Raid, which has the threefold purpose of making sure our two heroes achieve good ol' American vengeance on the Japanese, to slap some convenient closure on our three-hour General Hospital episode (in case you couldn't figure it out, Danny dies, and Rafe and Evelyn live happily ever after with the parachute baby Danny Jr.), and to make me wonder why this movie was titled "Pearl Harbor" and not "Babes, Bombs and Butt-kicking," or something rather. Then the credits roll, accompanied by a pop song that sounds like a rejected idea for Titanic.

The title "Pearl Harbor" presumes that this movie is the ultimate cinematic authority on the attack. But instead it amounts to little more than a three-hour soap opera with putrid dialogue that has the gall to give credit to generic G.I. Joes for key historical roles. No other work of historical fiction has at the same time taken itself so seriously and managed to show such irreverence both for its subject and for the very craft of film-making.

I thought this was an amazing movie, and I dont seee why people dont like it. Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck are so talented in this movie, and the emotion in this movie is so true. The action sequences were incredible, but most people hat this movie because it was "mushy". Well, it's a love story, it's supposed to be romantic. I understand it almost had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, but it was great all the same!