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Pearl Harbor DVD (2 Disc Set) [2001]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

A big summer blockbuster, Pearl Harbor is pitched as a romantic epic, but the story is essentially a frame for an impressive depiction of the Japanese attack on that "day of infamy", deploying all the modelwork, CGI, stunts and special effects necessary to trump previous screen re-enactments in Tora! Tora! Tora! and From Here to Eternity. At heart, it's another Top Gun-style exercise in heroically sublimated homosexuality as Rafe (Ben Affleck) and Dan (Josh Hartnett), lifelong buddies, fall out over a ridiculous contrivance that allows both decently to fallin love with a nurse (Kate Beckinsale) but forget all their differences when the fighting starts--as expected, their big climax comes in each other's arms, with Kate left behind as one wounded buddy extracts a promise from the other to look after his unborn child.

Historical snippets are interleaved, with Mako and Jon Voigt stiff under the prosthetics asAdmiral Yamamoto and Franklin Roosevelt, and a lot of detail is given about things like the wooden rudders on the new Japanese torpedoes, the chaos in the understaffed hospital as the heroine is forced to make lipstick triage marks on wounded men's foreheads and the terrible effects of strafing. A surprisingly bright little performance from Dan Aykroyd (a sole reminder of 1941) as an intelligence analyst is balanced by an insufferably smug one from Cuba Gooding Jr as a token black supporting hero. It's the first film of the George W Bush era: aggressive and dumb as a rock, utterly uninterested in period--no one in this WWII-era army smokes, swears or uses racial abuse (Gooding's boxing opponent sneers at him because he's a cook)--and awkwardly straddles a dignified treatment of the Japanese and America's actual spasm of hatred after the attack (one soldier refuses to be treated by a Japanese doctor, but that's it). When Pearl Harbour is bombed, we see endangered dogs, drowning men and dead women, but when Tokyo gets blasted in payback only buildings are destroyed and in long-shot. Michael Bay (Armageddon) remains a jittery director, a great second-unit man who can't deal with people or stories. It borrows from Titanic and Saving Private Ryan, but tidies the war of the latter up so it can still haul in a broad audience and therefore misses the real tragic sense of the former.--Kim Newman

On the DVD: Considering there are two discs in the special edition of this special effects homage, the second DVD is woefully short of extras. There is a 45-minute featurette on the highs and lows of bringing Michael Bay's magnum opus to the screen which, along with the usual interviews with cast and crew, features the more compelling eyewitness testimony bringing the events of December 7, 1941 to life. The irony of the second disc focussing on the research and quest for historical accuracy is a little difficult to swallow, considering that the film is little more than a paper thin, overly romanticised muddle of history and fantasy, but for those wanting to experience the real events on that fateful day rather than the Hollywood version, this is an excellent antidote. The movie has been THX digitally mastered for superior sound and picture quality improving those big-bang special effects and is presented in anamorphic widescreen with 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Unlike the Region 1 release, there's no DTS track but the 5.1 Dolby Digital sound is more than up to the challenge of the effects laden assault, with different elements of the Japanese attack rumbling between the speakers and making you feel you're in the thick of things. -- Kristen Bowditch


Yes ... it IS that bad!
Review date: 2008-08-30 Rating: 2 out of 10

Pearl Harbour was a defining moment in the history of world. Clearly the producers thought that wasn't exciting enough, so they had to introduce a love story! The point being ... what? To tug at the heart-strings? It was a REAL event, and people were being shot, bombed and torpedoed! Is that not emotional enough? Are we only supposed to care which guy gets the gal at the end?

The actual attack sequences were so flat that there may as well have been a big flashing sign at the bottom of the screen saying "computer simulation". Yes, I know it's CGI ... but GOOD CGI doesn't LOOK like CGI. When a Harvard dressed up to look like a Zero in Tora! Tora! Tora! is considerably more realistic and believable, you have to wonder if the producers of Pearl Harbour just used CGI for the sake of it.

This dire film isn't entertaining. It's not educational. It is a waste of plastic. What next? "Hiroshima - The Love Story"?



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Reviews


Horrendous...
Review date: 2008-07-03 Rating: 2 out of 10

This is truly an abysmal film, seriously a big budget doesn't help this be anything but utterly banal and mediocre movie. Terrible acting, excruciatingly embarrassing script, tiresome plot and historically inaccurate.

A train wreck - why would you subject yourself to it?

How do you spell travesty again?
Review date: 2008-05-11 Rating: 2 out of 10

Put quite simply, this film is rubbish.
Yes the CGIs are amazing, but the whole enterprise is shot through with inaccuracy making the film nothing other than a particularly bad pastiche. My ship recognition is not what it was but are those Spruance class destroyers riding at anchor?
Truly this is one pitiful movie, I was given two copies and was relieved
to give them away, thankfully 'Tora,Tora,Tora' is still available. I suppose the next Bruckheimer blockbuster will be a remake of 'The Great Escape' with Vin Diesel and Russell Crowe fleeing to safety on a stripped-down Honda Goldwing with Reese Witherspoon in the sidecar.












A turkey amongst turkeys
Review date: 2008-02-03 Rating: 2 out of 10

First, fast forward appx 60 minutes to the actual attack. You will then miss out on the tedious love story, and Affleck saving us against the nazi's in the battle of Britain.
The actual attack is well done, and is the highlight of the film.
It then meanders back to another ludicrous storyline of the lads enlisting on the famous Doolittle raid on Tokyo.
Too long(at least an hour), ridiculous dialogue, historically dodgy. Deserved the savaging it received on its release

Crap fantasy.
Review date: 2008-01-06 Rating: 2 out of 10

Shame on the director for taking what should have been a proper telling of a catastrophic incident in world history (ww2) and turning it into a pantomime advert, such a non starter and non entity, I found myself cringing and embarrassed for the memory of those brave that actually was there.

What a Load of bollox this film is, avoid at all cost.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Ben Affleck|Josh Hartnett|Kate Beckinsale

Creators:
Ben Affleck|Josh Hartnett|Kate Beckinsale (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Touchstone Home Video
Manufacturer: Touchstone Home Video
EAN: 5017188883078
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 2
Format: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2001-12-03
Number of discs: 2
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 183 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2001-05-25
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: French (Original Language)
Language: Japanese (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired)
Language: English (Subtitled)

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