Pearl Harbor (2001)

Director:

Michael Bay

Writer (WGA):

Randall Wallace (written by)

Release Date:

25 May 2001 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Romance | War

Tagline:

It takes a moment to change history. It takes love to change lives.

Plot:

Pearl Harbor follows the story of two best friends, Rafe and Danny, and their love lives as they go off to join the war.

Plot Keywords:

Pearl Harbor | Friend | Best Friend | Nurse | Pilot

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 10 wins & 34 nominations

Cast

Ben Affleck	...	Capt. Rafe McCawley
Josh Hartnett	...	Capt. Danny Walker
Kate Beckinsale	...	Nurse Lt. Evelyn Johnson
Cuba Gooding Jr.	...	Petty Officer Doris Miller
Jon Voight	...	President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Alec Baldwin	...	Lt. Col. James Doolittle
Tom Sizemore	...	Sgt. Earl Sistern
William Lee Scott	...	Lt. Billy Thompson
Greg Zola	...	Lt. Anthony Fusco
Ewen Bremner	...	Lt. Red Winkle
Jaime King	...	Nurse Betty Bayer (as James King)
Catherine Kellner	...	Nurse Barbara
Jennifer Garner	...	Nurse Sandra
Sara Rue	...	Nurse Martha
Michael Shannon	...	Lt. Gooz Wood

Also Known As:

Pearl Harbour (UK) (promotional title)
Tennessee (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sustained intense war sequences, images of wounded, brief sensuality and some language.

Runtime:

183 min | USA:184 min (director's cut)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Japanese | French

Colour:

Black and White (archive footage) | Colour (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS-8 (one 70 mm print for Tokyo Dome, Japan) | DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS (8 channels)

Certification:

Taiwan:PG-12 | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Canada:14A (British Columbia) | Canada:AA (Ontario) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PA (Manitoba) | Canada:PG (Alberta) | Iceland:12 | Malaysia:U | Brazil:12 | Argentina:Atp | Australia:MA (director's cut) | Australia:M | Chile:TE | Finland:K-15 | France:U | Germany:12 (f) (w) | Germany:16 (f) (director's cut) | Hong Kong:IIA | India:U | Ireland:12PG (original rating) | Ireland:12 (video rating) | Netherlands:12 | New Zealand:M (original rating) | New Zealand:R16 (director's cut) | Norway:15 | Peru:PT | Singapore:PG | South Korea:12 | Spain:7 | Sweden:11 | Sweden:15 (director's cut) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | UK:12 | USA:PG-13 | USA:R (director's cut)

Filming Locations:

Angel's Gate Park - 3601 Gaffey Street, San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Touchstone Pictures

Trivia:

To simulate the USS Oklahoma capsizing, the crew constructed the world's largest-ever gimbal. It took special effects supervisor John Frazier four months to design and a further four months for he and production designer Nigel Phelps to build. It weighed 700,000 pounds, was made of pure steel, could rise 25 degrees into the air and do a 180-degree barrel turn. In the film, as the Oklahoma rolls over, the back 450 feet is CG but the front portion is the real gimbal with over 150 real stuntmen on it.

Goofs:

Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Hardly anyone smokes. Although during the 1940s nearly every soldier smoked cigarettes, it was a conscious decision on the part of the film makers not to portray it because of the current feelings about the dangers of smoking.

Quotes:

Young Rafe: Land of the free.
Young Danny: Home of the brave.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Tiger Cruise (2004) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Little Brown Jug

It's as awful as you've heard. Really.

This bloated, overblown, tediously overlong, hilariously cheesy 'Titanic' wannabe showcases plenty of expertise in the visual effects department and nothing but laughable bombast everywhere else. 'Titanic' worked because James Cameron knew how to find the balance between fictional, old-fashioned cornball romance and a devastatingly true-life disaster. The sinking of the ship was not just a stunning achievement technically but also truly emotionally draining. Cameron had respect for his subject matter.

This monstrosity, on the other hand, is a disrespectful, clueless chump of a movie that plays like Bay thought he'd been far too restrained on 'Armageddon'. The bombing sequence is full of headless, armless and legless corpses, drooling shots of soldiers getting blown up, lovingly composed shots of torpedoes heading towards their targets, and a detailed succession of explosions, bullet hits and crashing planes so endless that I got the feeling that, rather than wanting us to realise the horror of the attack, Bay just can't leave anything unseen. It's warnography of the worst kind.

As for the screenplay, put a peg on your nose. Every line of dialogue is either a pompous pronouncement, a howlingly clichéd clanger, a hindsighted historical prediction, or what seems like the beginning of a momentous speech. Seriously, how were the crew not chewing their jumpers in an attempt to hide their laughter? Josh Hartnett's okay though, and likable for the first time, while Ben Affleck embarrasses himself, Kate Beckinsale does herself no favours as she climbs another rung on the Hollywood ladder, and decent actors like Jon Voight, Alec Baldwin, Dan Aykroyd, Tom Sizemore and Jennifer Garner are wasted in varying levels of blathering idiocy.

Meantime, Hans Zimmer's score blasts us into submission, coating every vaguely patriotic, heroic or romantic moment with music so glutinous that it's like being held down while someone pours a bucketful of golden syrup into your face. In fact, uber-hack Bay overplays the entire thing, using every manipulative technique at his disposal, from slo-mo to quiet sound with 'moving' music to at least a billion million shots of people looking up at planes. This movie is a whole new kind of bad, and it makes '1941' look like a straight-faced docudrama.