Pearl Harbor. - Review - movie review

All Hands, April, 2001 by Hai Pittman

Like You've Never Seen It ... And Then Some

WANT TO KNOW THE RECIPE FOR A SUCCESSFUL Hollywood movie? Start with action film producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("Top Gun," "Beverly Hills Cop," "Enemy of the State,") and music video-turned adventure film director Michael Bay ("The Rock," "Bad Boys," "Armageddon"). Add in Oscar-nominated screenwriter Randall Wallace ("The Man in the Iron Mask," "Braveheart"). Release the film through Touchstone Pictures (Disney/Buena Vista). Cast actors Ben Affleck, Dan Aykroyd, Alec Baldwin, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Jon Voight, along with a host of seasoned and newer Hollywood faces, Set the movie in a romantic, early World War II backdrop and sprinkle in generous digital effects paid for by the most prodigious up-front movie budget in history ($145 million). Set the movie for a Memorial Day opening. Stir and let simmer.

Scheduled to explode into theaters this Memorial Day is the Bruckheimer action epic "Pearl Harbor," which recreates the events prior to, during and after the infamous attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet's headquarters. It's also being touted as a love story.

The story follows two young friends who grew up to be fighter pilots in the days prior to World War II. Rafe McCawley (played by Ben Affleck) joins the British Royal Air Force to help the British fight the axis powers in Europe.

Meanwhile, his buddy Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) joins the Army Air Corps at home. When Danny learns that Rafe has been killed in combat, he consoles Rafe's distraught girlfriend, Navy nurse Evelyn Stewart (played by Kate Beckinsale). Danny and Evelyn soon fall in love, only to learn that Rafe is alive -- he wasn't really killed in action -- and Rafe returns to find his girlfriend and best friend in a relationship. As the conflict between friends erupts, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and the trio are thrown into chaos.

"Pearl Harbor" will also show us the popular political isolationism of the time and the challenges of an American president (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, played by Jon Voigt) dealing with a constituency that did not want to see American troops at war, even as war raged overseas in Europe. It took the cataclysmic events of Dec. 7, 1941, to catapult the United States into war. Star Ben Affleck discusses the final outcome of those political issues on his website www.Affleck.com.

"At a terrible political crossroad, FDR was stuck, until that day in 1941, when a fleet of Japanese battleships, attach fighters and a group of bombers led a shockingly brazen assault on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, leaving 2,403 Americans dead and 1,178 wounded in less than an hour. The Japanese lost less than 200 men, and only one was captured.

"The movie will capture, using the most advanced special effects, and reproduce the exact events of that terrible day. If there is one thing I am certain of, it is that Michael's enormous visual story-telling talents will bring to the attack sequence a sense of horrifying realism and terrible majesty."

Director Michael Bay described his effort to entertainment website Variety.com this way: "You will see what happened at Pearl Harbor like you have never seen it in another movie."

Screenwriter Wallace has woven his fictional characters into the tragic back-drop to create a compelling story. Bruckheimer and Disney pulled out the stops to historically recreate battleship row, Ford Island and a number of actual heroic acts during the attack. Many of the interwoven stories were drawn from the accounts of Pearl Harbor survivors.

Actor Tom Sizemore will play a mechanic who shoots down attacking Japanese aircraft with a shotgun. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays USS West Virginia Sailor Dorie Miller, who helped save numerous shipmates. Miller, an African-American, earned the Navy Cross for herosim and had a ship, USS Miller (DE 1091, later FF 1091), named in his honor.

The film will also detail the aftermath of the attack and the retaliation effort, In which the characters played by Affleck and Hartnett join Army Lt.Col. Jimmy Doolittle (played by Alec Baldwin) in his raid on Japan to help build American morale. In that daring mission, Doolittle launched his squadron of Army-Air Corps B-25 bombers off the deck of USS Hornet (CV 8) and conducted a low-level bombing mission over Tokyo. Those efforts were previously detailed cinematically in the 1944 Spencer Tracey film "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo."

Never to be outdone, All Hands locked horns with tough guy filmmaker Jerry Bruckheimer last year to discuss his upcoming big-budget motion picture "Pearl Harbor." Following are some of his thoughts on the movie, filmmaking, and the military.

All Hands: "The film 'Saving Private Ryan' galvanized veterans and brought a conscience back to America about war and the reality of war. What will 'Pearl Harbor' do?"

Bruckheimer: "Our film is not 'Private Ryan.' We're going to get much more involved with the characters and it's a love story, truly a more personal story. It's a very serious film like "Ryan" was. We're certainly going to try to be accurate with the destruction and what happened. ... We want a really broad audience for this film. We feel the story is so universal, and we want kids to be able to go. ... Kids don't even know about Pearl Harbor. We think it's important to show what happened and how we came out of the ashes."