Pearl Harbor - A Film That Will Live In Infamy

TruthNews Movie Review
July 16, 2001

Several weeks after the premiere of Disney's new film Pearl Harbor, I broke down and went to see it, in spite of reading reviews that warned that the film was shallow and historically inaccurate. However, the film is worse than the reviewers said. One of the opening scenes in Pearl Harbor takes place at Mitchell Field on Long Island. The two heroes of the film, played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are shown flying their fighter planes in training during the days leading up to America's entrance into World War II. As the fearless fliers are shown playing chicken in their $45,000 airplanes, the rugged mountains of Long Island form a scenic backdrop to the mock aerial combat.

This sequence sums up Disney's approach to historical accuracy in Pearl Harbor. So what if Long Island has no mountains? Only the people in New York will know the difference anyway. Towards the end of the film, the Doolittle raiders are practicing carrier takeoffs at Eglin Field in the Florida Panhandle. Again, rugged mountains form a spectacular backdrop as the fliers struggle to get their land-based B-25 bombers airborne in a length of runway no longer than a WWII carrier deck. A funny thing, but the rugged mountains of the Florida panhandle look a lot like the rugged mountains of Long Island. (Note to the geographically challenged: Florida, like Long Island, has no mountains). This introduction of mountains in areas where there are none is similar to Disney's Pocahontas, in which the title character dives off a 400 foot cliff into a river. Tourists visiting Jamestown have probably looked in vain for those cliffs ever since.

Of course, Disney is a veteran company at making cartoon fairy tales, so it should come as no surprise that Pearl Harbor bears a striking resemblance to Disney's products of yore: a story totally disconnected from reality, with improbable plot twists, events that defy the laws of physics, and two-dimensional characters (probably an overstatement - the characters would be more properly described as one-dimensional). The only thing Pearl Harbor lacks to be an old fashioned Disney film is talking animals.

The plot of Pearl Harbor consists of a turgid love triangle overlaid on the historical events of 1941-1942. Like the movie Titanic, the story line is less about the title events than the fictitious love story (the movie consists of about 30 minutes of Pearl Harbor, 30 minutes of Doolittle raid, and 2 hours of the love story/melodrama).

Unlike some reviewers, I found the fictional drama of Pearl Harbor to be easier to take than the battle scenes. Pearl Harbor has been praised for its battle scenes, but these came off as completely bogus. For example, the battleship Oklahoma is shown capsizing in the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, the model used in the film was so small that I thought it was a destroyer until the end of the sequence in which the name "Oklahoma" is seen on the ship's hull (another historical inaccuracy, because Navy ships did not have their names painted on the hull). But the actual sinking of the ship is even worse. As the ship keels to the side, it floats on top of the water like a ping-pong ball rather than in the water. Completely defying the laws of physics, the ship continues to float completely on top of the water until it's upside down. What is this, a blimp or a 27,000 ton battleship?

The dogfighting by our intrepid pilots is equally inane. While torpedo bombers are attacking the airfield (the Japanese must have used specially modified torpedoes that propel themselves through concrete), the pilots make their way through a hail of fire to their airplanes and get airborne. And they go off to shoot down the Japanese bombers that are attacking the fleet, right? Wrong. They defend the airfield. Of course, by now the torpedo bombers have transformed into a horde of fighter aircraft. Rather than shooting down the Japanese Zero fighters in conventional movie fashion, however, the fliers set up an elaborate (and highly improbable trap) in which the mechanics lug machine guns to the top of the control tower and set them while our heroes lead the Japanese on a merry chase, never getting a scratch, of course. Then, when the trap is set, the fliers lead the chasing Zeroes past the control tower, the Zeroes collide with each other, and the airfield is saved (well, not much of it, because all the airplanes have been destroyed and most of the people killed, but the control tower is still standing).

The combat scenes aren't the only scenes that bear the stench of historical inaccuracy. At the beginning of the attack, Japanese airplanes fly over a baseball game as they fly to bomb the harbor. And this isn't just a pick up game, but an organized event with bleachers, fans, and uniforms. All well and good, until one remembers that this is 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning in December. Any one remember the last time he attended a baseball game at 7 am on a Sunday morning in December?

Pearl Harbor's presentation of the Doolittle raid, a real event in which Army bombers flew from Navy carriers in 1942 to make the first bombing of Japan, is riddled with errors and improbabilities. While this event would make a good movie in itself, Pearl Harbor glosses over the historical background of the Doolittle raid and uses it instead to present a moment of victory on which to end the film. (One wonders why Disney didn't just give a happy ending to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and have the two intrepid fliers shoot down 500 Japanese aircraft and sink the Japanese fleet. Oh - but this wouldn't be historically accurate.) In addition to the aforementioned mountains of the Florida panhandle, one other glaring inaccuracy is presented. During the Doolittle raid, the heroine, played by Kate Beckinsale, manages to sit in the command post in Hawaii to listen to the radio conversations of her two boyfriends as they attack their targets in Japan. It seems realistic enough until one considers the following: (1) why are the crews talking to each other on the radio since it would give away their position to the Japanese, and (2) how are these radio conversations getting back 4000 miles to Hawaii, anyway? By satellite? Since one of the heroes of the film had already flown in the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor, and now the Doolittle raid, one wonders why the producers didn't have him fly the atomic raid on Hiroshima as well. They probably thought about it, but concluded that showing the nuking of Japan would hurt ticket sales there.

In almost every scene in which he appears, President Franklin Roosevelt is shown being wheeled around in his wheel chair. In one melodramatic scene, he calls for an attack on Japan. When his military advisors tell him it can't be done, Roosevelt (played by Jon Voight) responds with a speech which begins, "When I had the use of my legs." He then struggles to rise from his chair with aid of leg braces and cane and shouts: "Don't tell me it can't be done." Commentator Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post takes particular exception to this portrayal of Roosevelt. He points out that Roosevelt went to great lengths to hide his disability, and would not talk about it even to his wife or mother.

The story line is the standard boy meets girl, girl sees boy's butt, girl falls in love, boy goes off to fight in Europe and gets killed, girl falls in love with boy's best friend who gets her pregnant (on screen, no less - parents beware), boy returns to life (shades of Dallas here - honey, it was all a dream), boy and best friend have a fist fight over girl but attack on Pearl Harbor intervenes so they go off to shoot down the Japanese airplanes, boy and best friend join Doolittle raid to bomb Tokyo, best friend gets killed, boy marries girl, boy and girl live happily ever after with best friend's kid. In comparison to the war scenes, while the characters are one-dimensional, and the plot implausible, at least this part of the story is comprehensible. The dialogue, however, is forgettable, and as if to underscore this fact, is often drowned out by music and background noises.

Overall, historical inaccuracy and cartoon plot aside, Pearl Harbor is a virtually incomprehensible photomontage, rather like taking an MTV video and stretching it to 3 hours. That's right, the movie lasts for 3 long, tedious hours (the actual battle at Pearl Harbor only lasted two). Much of the action, especially the battle scenes, are difficult to follow, unless you know the historical background. In fact, that's one of the irritating things about the Pearl Harbor movie. The producers expect the viewer to know the history of Pearl Harbor in order to understand the plot line, but then expect the viewer to not care about the historical inaccuracies. Save your money and rent Tora Tora Tora.

Happy ending rating: BS (Bittersweet - since one of the main characters gets killed at the end. However, we never get to know the characters, so his death is not particularly sad).

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