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WEEKEND PREVIEW
The harbor… the harbor…
I admit it. When I walked into the screening of Pearl Harbor, I was ready to have problems with the film. Early word pretty much was along the lines of, “the love story is silly, but what a battle sequence!” And so, seeing the film, I was shocked.
Not only do I consider Pearl Harbor a bad movie. I consider it Michael Bay’s worst work to date. And the much talked about attack-on-Pearl-Harbor sequence did nothing to change my feelings. Sadly. You know, I don’t want to dislike a movie like Pearl Harbor. Even with Armageddon, which was a hyperactive mess on so many levels, I could appreciate the development of characters and the finesse with which Bay blew stuff up real good. The attack on Pearl Harbor is enormous. But anyone who looks past the CG itself can see that there is no sense of geography, time or logic to make the sequence truly compelling. We spend about 90 minutes with these characters before we get to the attack. Why is it that we have no sense of where the barracks or the secondary airfield or the nurses' quarters are in relation to the ships? Or why some people know that they are being attacked while others, theoretically just miles away, don’t hear the bombs for tens of minutes? Or why so much information suggesting that something bad was about to happen was completely disregarded by senior officer after senior officer?
But perhaps the biggest weakness of the whole battle sequence is that Bay had to bring in this devastating war story in as a PG-13. Saving Private Ryan may have been the most harrowing 20 minute war sequence ever put on film, in great part because people died. Frankly, I feel bad for Bay. He had to obscure some of the work he did in the hospital wards, I’m pretty sure, to avoid an R. It may look like he was trying to be arty, but the use of the effect is so inconsistent, I can only figure that he was softening the impact of certain images for the MPAA. Likewise, when the bombs hit, Bay is reduced to the overused clichés of bodies flying into the air as the car/ship/plane explodes behind the stuntman (whether that stuntman was real or computer created).
Of course, I can’t blame all of this on the MPAA. Why, for instance, are characters talking about men being trapped alive on the Arizona? Isn’t that the ultimate horror? Why aren’t we seeing it? We see plenty of men being overcome by water, but to be in an air pocket, 300 feet below water, waiting? That’s horror. There is a suggestion of another great horror that we never get to experience for ourselves. When a big ship sinks, if you are nearby, you are going down with the ship, no matter how good a swimmer you are. So all those guys who are hanging on, Titanic-like, are just waiting to die. But so are some of those swimming away. We hear, I recall, someone scream, “It’s sucking me back in!” But we don’t see that terrible moment. Why not?
And don’t even get me started on the ridiculous coincidences of the overall sequence. The only two planes that get into the air seem to be those of our two heroes. And while I’m willing to believe two guys downing 8 enemy planes, the sense that they were battling a 500-strong contingent never seems real. Then of course, there are the laughers, like one character desperately trying to get access to a radio room to find out what happens on a raid… a raid where they are flying in radio silence. ?????
But have I mentioned the first 90 minutes? The movie lost me within five minutes, as a flying obsessed boy doesn’t know that pushing a particular button will start his dad’s crop duster… hilarity ensues. And am I the only one who wondered how the Ben Affleck was best friends with Josh Hartnett, who looks every day of the seven years younger than Affleck he is?
Bay is pretty shameless in his thefts, especially considering that they don’t measure up to the originals. Top Gun has been done. Stephen Spielberg’s dance hall sequence in 1941 is a classic that hasn’t really been beat. When Alec Baldwin is holding an envelope with a letter to read, I was just waiting for “Second prize… steak knives” to come out of his mouth. (I like Baldwin, but Costner would have been a lot better… much less showy.) We’ve seen the stuttering guy gags before… over and over. We’ve seen the horny virgin who happens to look like a supermodel. And while I’ve never seen a first date end up on a window washing set-up on the side of the Queen Mary, I never want to see it again.
The thing is, I am more than willing to go for melodrama. After all, I love Moulin Rouge. I love End of the Affair. But there is melodrama and then there is the insult of failed melodrama. One of the great tricks of melodrama is that the characters tend to do some really bad stuff. Pearl Harbor is so politically correct that the “truer” love is the chaste one… God forbid we think that the heroine is a slut. And even when she finally has sex (was she a virgin?), in a scene stolen from b, it is one time only and immediately regretted by the young lass.
Of course, the Germans barely exist in this film and with their absence, there is no Jewish genocide or any question about FDR’s complicity in not choosing to fight against it on principle. The Japanese are incredibly efficient and only are doing this because they’ve been pushed to the wall by U.S. political maneuvers reducing their energy supply. (That was a laugh, given the current “crisis” in the U.S.) Hawaii is free of those pesky Hawaiians in this film. The only real shot in the film is against the British, who need Ben Affleck to save their position, leaving the Brit commander to praise Affleck above any of his poor pilots.
And what about those small roles? You might think this is a movie that features Cuba Gooding, Jr. But he gets less on-screen time than James King, arriving late and disappearing for extended periods. Tom Sizemore? Nice performance, but he’s just their to fill a cigar-chewing stereotype. He’s not even smart enough to know the bombs are falling or to prep the planes he has before Ben Affleck tells him to, well into the attack. Cary Tagawa has almost nothing to do except to be a well-known Asian actor. To see William Fichtner reduced to the ugly scene he has to play is sad. Dan Ackroyd is fine in his role, though he ends up being Chicken Little with the sky on his head, with no respect. The generally underused John Diehl shows up for a few frames as a doctor. Colm Feore is wasted… and his character is inexplicably unwilling to ever take action. Only John Voight as FDR really shines, even when he is given ham-fisted dialogue.
Speaking of dialogue, this is one of those films where you wonder what ever happened to this great writer whose work you once saw. Randall Wallace gave subtlety and grace to the men who populated Braveheart. He found ways for them to express themselves both simply and profoundly. Here, we get a hash of every old line, every old cliché, every unbelievable word ever put on film. Really terrible work here. And it makes no sense.
The comparison I kind of expected here was to last summer’s The Patriot, written by Robert Rodat, who was coming off of Saving Private Ryan into another not-so-good movie. But compared to Pearl Harbor, The Patriot WAS Saving Private Ryan. Roland Emmerich seemed to have lost his nerve as the movie went along, getting cornier and cornier and pushing the audience to feels something, ANYTHING!!! But Rodat gave him some great scenes, particularly early in the film. Wallace has not done Bay this favor in Pearl Harbor. There is not one great dialogue sequence. There is not one great sequence in this film, period. (Though getting Josh Hartnett onto a cross – you’ll see – is one of the ugliest pieces of on-screen metaphor I’ve seen lately.)
I am honestly shocked at how bad a film Pearl Harbor is. I have found entertainment value in all three of Bay’s other films. I’m no Armageddon fan, but there was some stuff there that audiences could grab onto. I liked The Rock. And Bad Boys was overstuffed visually, but Bay allowed Smith and Lawrence to roll and it worked despite its flaws. Pearl Harbor represents everything that is wrong about Bay’s work. Sure, it’s not cut as quick as Armageddon. But you know, I wasn’t expecting Bay to keep challenging the cut speed record. His visual skills are real and I’m sure that in retrospect, there are too many cuts in that film even for him. I’m not holding that against him. It’s not unfair to point out that it’s only his fourth film. But the least I expected was a good drama that happened to have a giant video game in the middle. I would mention the dichotomy, but I would have understood.
I don’t care about anyone in Pearl Harbor. And I wasn’t thrilled by attack. Has there ever been more CG in one sequence? Probably not. Why would any movie critic in America care? That’s like saying that Twister was good because the tornadoes looked great. NO! Jurassic Park was Jurassic Park because it had Spielberg’s heart. The Lost World was a waste because it didn’t. (Let’s hope that Joe Johnston brings his huge heart to JP3.) And I wouldn’t insult you, the real audience for this film, by imagining that you will be satisfied by massive amounts of effects. You know better. Well, most of you do.
So, the film will do $250 million domestic and be hailed as a hit. But this is no great film. Sadly, it’s not even a good film. Worse, I don’t know that I could make it through another screening without getting up to stretch my legs a few times. Let’s pray for better films to come.
