Am I the only one who didn't hate this movie?

When this movie comes out in 2001, I really love it. Then again, I was 8 years old back then, and this movie did introduce me to world war 2 and turn me into a history buff that I am today.

It's a good movie...it's not bad at all. It's got cheesiness to it...sure...but it's not a bad movie. It was exciting and romantic and really put us at Pearl Harbor like Titanic did for that tragedy...until another Pearl Harbor movie comes along, it will be the definitive movie based on the event that helps us better appreciate how terrible it was.

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"Live every week like it's Shark Week."

Dude,

I could not agree with you more! My area of expertese is WW2 and I love this movie! The historical inaccuracies? So what, when I go to the movies I want to be entertained and this film gets all the senses going, Michael Bay you emo and I love you for that, peace!

It was great movie, thou i didnt really care about that love triangle thing

Sorry, but I hated this movie. The characters were terrible, unrealistic and not likable. I'd say I have an average knowledge of WWII and I found the historical inaccuracies glaring and unnecessary. Tossing in a fictional love story would have been fine if done well. I enjoyed it in Titanic for example. Here it was just cliche and annoying. Terrible movie in my opinion.

I actually liked this film a lot, Hartnett was gorgeous in this.



Global Warming, it's a personal decision innit? - Nigel Tufnel

While I think a lot of people just want to bust on Ben Affleck (case in point, look at the reaction to Ben being named as the next Batman), I didn't like the film because it was way too long, had too many subplots and had a cheesy romantic story line.

I did like Kate Beckinsale but Affleck's and Hartnett's characters were too much. A simple back story of being friends growing up did not need the Battle of Britain subplot. Considering all of the personnel killed on Dec. 7, there were many ways to frame the love story to the point where Kate would not know who of her two lovers bit the dust until the end.

That said, most people don't know the full history of the attack so only purists can truly complain about most of the inaccuracies.

That said, this film was incredibly lazy. Showing an American tank in Cologne, Germany in 1941 when America did not reach that city until 1945? Roosevelt saying more aid needed to be sent to Britain and Russia early in 1941 when Russia did not become an ally until after the Germans attacked it in June 1941?

Filming at Pearl with Knox-class frigates in the background? Doolittle with a model of an F-86 Sabre jet on his bookshelf? All the battleships moving constantly being next to the wrong sister ship when a trip to the Pearl Harbor library would have shown the right setup?

Dorie Miller aboard the USS Arizona when it's well-documented that he was aboard USS West Virginia? Then, to add insult to injury, he's shown getting his Navy Cross from a commander whereas he got it from Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Affleck's dad does crop dusting in 1923, a year before the first crop duster comes into use and 11 years before the plane dad is using is actually built? The Japanese patrol ship that spots the Doolittle task force is only 400 yards away, which means it should be colliding with the task force, not just reporting on it?

As a veteran, that galled me. I could even overlook the sappy love story that hit all the cliches. That plot can be found in hundreds of movies. But, combine it with lazy film-making and two subplots that could easily have been movies in their own right and you get an overlong film that could have been edited down to two hours and ended with the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Besides the "bait and switch" of the marketing (which essentially sold the movie as an action film telling a historical event, and instead was really a melodrama romance film set in WW2), the major complaint about the movie is the "no passing resemblance to reality" that is horrible for something claiming to depict an actual historical event. It's a pretty bad melodrama to start with, and one of WORST historical event recreations put to film in the last 20 years.

For instance, it's on Bravo right now, and, while I was typing this, there was a line from FDR talking to his military staff after the attack: "Is it true, that we can still hear trapped sailors from the Arizona?", and a general answers "It's true, but we can't get to them as they are under 40 feet of water".

15 seconds with any High School history textbook would tell you:

(a) It was the Oklahoma which was capsized with many people trapped inside. The film even correctly shows this, including the historically-accurate of the efforts to save those trapped by cutting through the bottom hull of the overturned ship.
(b) The Arizona was completely destroyed when its magazine detonated. Everyone on-board who wasn't blown overboard died either instantly or within a few minutes of the ship's remains sinking. FDR wouldn't be asking this question, and even if he did, the reply would have corrected him on the ship name.
(c) A general isn't going to be answering those questions. They'd come from an admiral. In the context of the movie, there's no reason why the character replying couldn't have been an admiral (i.e. they had a table full of flag officers, and it would have been a simple matter of giving the 1-line reply to one of the other actors).


It's a classic case where the writer and director just didn't care. There's forgivable artistic license, where you forgo some technical details in service to telling the story cleaner and better, then there's just inane stupidity which actually DETRACTS from the storyline. There was a whole lot of attention to historical detail in many areas, and a COMPLETE disregard for them all over the place, too. For instance, it's forgivable that they used wide footage shot of a modern carrier fleet in the Doolittle scenes - the footage would have been expensive to CGI to fix, it's only a couple of seconds, and most people wouldn't notice. The CGI models for the high-level (i.e aircraft POV) attacks on battleship row are accurate. Then, we have lots and lots of closeup footage of ships blowing up. Anything that's not a battleship is PLAINLY a modern ship. Heck, you don't have to look closely to see (a) a complete lack of guns - all period ships would be covered in gun turrets, and (b) MISSILE launchers. The list of historical inaccuracies is longer than my arm. In a pre-1980 film, that's forgivable. In a modern film, especially one depicting an ACTUAL EVENT (not just using the period as a setting), its blatantly unacceptable.

Not to mention this is a seminal point in American History, and it's treatment in this movie feels a lot like the film makers were taking a dump on those people's graves in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery.

Short answer: taken on it's own, it's a bad piece of film making, because it's a below-average melodrama romance welded to an descent action-adventure. Made much, much worse because its insultingly bad as a historical depiction, which was what it explicitly was sold as.