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Opinion
Pearl Harbor — a bore
By Juliet Hindell
It's meant to be the movie of the summer, a heart-wrenching romance, a war epic, this year's "Titanic." It is of course "Pearl Harbor," the American movie about the Japanese attack on the American fleet in 1941, which brought the U.S. into World War II. It hit the screens in Japan on July 14.
As a journalist covering Japan, I wanted to see how the Japanese were portrayed and whether it might cause controversy here, so I saw a preview. I think there is little chance that anyone in Japan would find the way the Japanese are portrayed in the film offensive. In fact, the Japanese characters are all caricatures — all noble warriors, who show no emotion and talk in short staccato phrases. Not one of them is fleshed out enough for the audience to find them evil or unpleasant.
But moviegoers in Japan and elsewhere may take umbrage with the film for being not only preposterous but down right boring. It opens with a lengthy pre-amble in which our hero played by Ben Affleck of the chiseled jaw, learns to fly, falls in love with a nurse, Kate Beckinsale, and is then sent off to fight with the British Royal Air Force against the Germans. He disappears, thus allowing a ludicrous love triangle to develop when his fellow pilot and best friend falls for his girl.
I don't want to give too much away in case you are determined to see this film. But here are some of the reasons I was yawning way before the end. There is no passion between our lovers. Ben is wooden and Kate was billed at the screening I saw as the 21st century's Ingrid Bergman. I don't think so. Ingrid, who starred in that timeless war classic "Casablanca," was not only much more beautiful, she was a mesmerizing actress. Kate, on the other hand, struggles with an underdeveloped character and a clunky script.
But aside from the bogus romance, this isn't even an impressive war movie. We know Hollywood is good at graphic war scenes. "Saving Private Ryan" had one of the most realistic war sequences I have ever seen and acted as a powerful argument against war. But in this movie, the bombing of Pearl Harbor is rendered into a kind of computer game where planes are shot down and battleships sunk, but you rarely see any blood. I'm not bloodthirsty, so maybe that is a good thing, but you also end up not caring about the fate of any of the characters. I found myself being surprised that there were more than 3,000 casualties. You don't see much of it on screen.
But what irritated me most was that Pearl Harbor was an astonishing event in world history and here it is made to look like a side show to a most unconvincing love story. That tactic worked with "Titanic," but here history is just too big to be pushed aside and made the backdrop. Those who died at Pearl Harbor, both American and Japanese, deserve more from Hollywood.