Pearl Harbor

After Armageddon I was expecting another stupid movie by Bay. It was more or less the case, but I have to admit that Pearl Harbor is a daft film that I quite liked. Until the attack scene it felt like a nice picture book, where the plot and the acting are not important. The raid itself is solidly shot, and even the tearful moment at the very end with the crawling little boy just fits into this cliché. (27.08.2002)

US patriotism on a massive scale, colossal and complicated romance, thanks to a love triangle and unimpressive acting performances all wrapped in Bay’s trademark aggressive directing style, or else a load of hogwash that ended up better than it seemed it could at first sight. And this is primarily thanks to the amazing scene involving the attack on Pearl Harbour. Bay’s first (but not last) blunder. (26.04.2005)

A perfect romantic film with a war storyline as a supplement and an unsuccessful attempt at patriotism as a flaw. At the time, it was a deserved film event, and more than a decade later, it brings back heavy nostalgia and still perfectly functions as a blockbuster with one of Zimmer's life soundtracks. (18.02.2006)

Nach der Hälfte der Zeit dachte ich, die Krankenschwestern seien echte Huren. Oder Ben Affleck und Josh Hartnett auf einer Reise zum Verlust ihrer Unschuld, bei der die Ereignisse des 7. Dezember 1941 nur überflüssiges Füllwerk sind. (27.02.2009)

It may be pathetic, but visually, aesthetically, and musically, it is such a lavish affair that it completely disarmed me. A classic love story set in a big catastrophe – a cliché at first glance. It really is like that, but you can't help but like it. It doesn't pretend to be anything else. (26.10.2003)

Pearl Harbor is probably the most kitschily pathetic piece of Hollywood I've ever seen. In this respect, one might be tempted to label Bay's Armageddon the winner, but there all the jingoism and heroism was entirely intentional, keeping the nonsense-filled story in the comic realms of pure narrative delight. Here, however, everything is taken terribly seriously, which is understandable given the subject matter, but when it’s juxtaposed with the sheer anti-realism of all the plot twists, sucked out of some universal filmmaking handbook for clichés and mass entertainment, it also makes the film an almost unbearably intrusive, cruelly long, arrogant show-off. It's true that Bay has a knack for the craft, everything looks awfully good under his direction and the air raid scene has an amazing audiovisual charge, but narratively this guy wanders through boring romance and hints of gripping drama, showing fully how much worse a director he is than, say, the natural humanist Spielberg. The best things about the film are the score by Hans Zimmer, which is almost instantly iconic, and the natural charm of the likeable Kate Beckinsale, even though the script gave her a rather impossible role. (01.12.2016)

It's interesting how some directors make money out of historical events/tragedies. First, it was Titanic, now Pearl Harbor. What's next? A romantic drama set in Auschwitz? (26.06.2016)

This is exactly the type of movie I don't like, and actually learned to hate. It's grandiose, it wants to show how everything will be magnificent, but when you look closer, you realize how small it actually is. The characters are tragically flat; you can't really connect with anyone, and it's all just for show like Bay's other films. No, I don't give credit to this director. (30.09.2016)