'Pearl Harbor', not much of a blast after all

By Tam Notosusanto

Pearl Harbor, * out of four stars, 183 minutes; Starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Alec Baldwin; Directed by Michael Bay

JAKARTA (JP): You'd think Hollywood would stop exploiting historical tragedies to make mindless summer blockbusters.

But then again, why would they? Titanic became one of the top- grossing movies of all time and winner of multiple Academy Awards (it was released in the fall of 1997 but was once slated for a summer release). Who could blame anybody who wants to copy that kind of gargantuan success?

And so, film producer Jerry Bruckheimer and his constant collaborator, director Michael Bay -- both men responsible for hit movies such as Bad Boys, The Rock, and Armageddon -- apparently wanted to try their hands on history-based action spectacles.

Self-proclaimed history buffs, Bruckheimer and Bay came up with the perfect incident in American history to serve as a vehicle for their movie. And what better year to have this film out than the 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Watching Pearl Harbor, you can't help feeling that too many elements James Cameron employed in Titanic are put to use here by Bay, Bruckheimer and screenwriter Randall Wallace (Braveheart).

First of all, there's the historical tragedy that claimed thousands of lives, used as the movie climax. Then there's the fictional love triangle story thrown in for the soap opera junkies among the audience. And finally, the movie's lead couple is played by an American heartthrob and a British actress.

The American heartthrob is Oscar-winning co-screenwriter of Good Will Hunting, Ben Affleck, a superstar on the rise with movies like Armageddon, Reindeer Games and the upcoming The Sum of All Fears. The British actress is Beckinsale, a face more familiar to the arthouse fanatics through films like Much Ado About Nothing and Cold Comfort Farm, and who is probably aspiring for Kate Winslet stardom.

Affleck plays Rafe McCawley, a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps, who falls in love with Navy nurse Evelyn Johnson, played by Beckinsale. They have nothing between them but the war, and the couple is sure to consummate their relationship if Rafe is not sent overseas to fight the Battle of Britain. And when the news arrives that Rafe's plane is shot down, Evelyn mourns along with Rafe's best friend since childhood, Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett), who is also an U.S. Air Corps pilot.

It really doesn't take a genius to guess where the story is headed. Evelyn falls in love with Danny, and when their relationship arrives to the point that Evelyn and Rafe never reach, guess who comes back from the dead? A seasoned moviegoer will find this unsurprising because there's no way the top-billed star of the movie dies only halfway through the film, and so Rafe has to survive that plane crash.

And as the three characters go through their awkward moments at Pearl Harbor (where Danny and Evelyn are both stationed), the movie is slipping into a yawn-inducing phase. That's just perfect timing for the Japanese bombers to arrive.

The Pearl Harbor attack sequence is really worth the wait. Bay uses all kinds of devices to recreate the event: swirling, swooping camera movements that follow the trail of bombs as they go about destroying things; effective sound and special effects -- hydrolic, digital and otherwise -- to enhance the imagery of destruction and suffering; and fuzzy, shaky photography to present the horrors of the aftermath. This sequence stands alongside the ship-sinking in Titanic and the D-Day sequence in Saving Private Ryan in how modern cinema technology can bring history book descriptions to life.

But this movie doesn't end there. No, the filmmakers can't have the impression of hopelessness and defeat as their film's denouement. That's why they have included the Dolittle Raid, a little-known episode in history books to fill in the film's last hour. The Raid is a mission to drop bombs over Tokyo, led by the legendary Colonel James Dolittle (Alec Baldwin). It took place a year after Pearl Harbor, and pales by comparison to the Japanese attack, but hey, at least here American soldiers appear dignified and victorious, instead of lying around helpless and screaming in pain. It doesn't matter that this movie is suffering from an extreme and overlong anticlimax.

As for the sentimental stuff, well, you know that the cop-out way to end a love triangle is to have one of the characters die. Whether you care to find out is your prerogative.

My suggestion, for those who value time highly, and just want to experience the essence of this movie: come in late (about an hour into the movie), watch the attack sequence, and after that come out, fast.