World War Boooooo!

One thing is for sure, "Titanic" isn't sunk. It will continue to be the number one grossing film after the summer of 2001. The only film that may have had a chance to unseat it, "Pearl Harbor," is a rather glaring disappointment. Worse, it might well be considered a manipulative, insipid, Hollywood, piece of shit.

The problem is evident from the first segment of the film. Within it, two childhood buddies play in an aircraft before one's father comes to retrieve him in a slightly violent manner. As one guesses, the other boy fights off the older man. The scene is contrived, typical and poorly acted. The film is rarely able to reach any level higher than this when it attempts to be dramatic, romantic or involving. Everything is maneuvered to make the audience react. We can feel the filmmaker's hand all about us, suggesting when we cry, when we have our heart broken, when we feel patriotic, when we ache for revenge. It's all prearranged for us. No thinking is necessary. Only those who cannot think, or those who are less than the age of 12, will not feel that they have been thrust deep into some sort of cinematic mousetrap. Of course, 13- year-olds, at who the film is aimed, will recognize the formula with ease; after all "Pearl Harbor" only emulates the most popular film of all time, or at least, the highest money maker of all time, "Titanic." The formula is simple: Create characters, make the audience love them and care about them, dump them in a major historical disaster, kill someone. This should now be considered "90's filmmaking 101."

Director Michael Bay, who is perhaps one of Hollywood's biggest whores, and scripter Randall Wallace (who it seems wants to be one) craft... (well "craft" is too good of a word), contrive (that's more accurate) a film that is soapy, manipulative and formulaic. It's will be realized as a complete shambles, if you cares to disect it. And, trust me, during the first 90 minutes of the film, you'll want to! Anything to take your mind off the abysmal acting, the horrid plot and the glossy, inaccurate period details.

Yes, the acting is overtly horrible. Ben Affleck is as stiff and wooden as the carved-oak dildo up his ass. Apparently he spent a lot of time with Alec Baldwin off camera and the older thespian taught him how to NOT EMOTE. Thanks a fucking lot Alec! Way to fuck up the new school. Of course, we saw Affleck emote in "Chasing Amy." Maybe Baldwin was right that something had to be done.

It could be worse. Affleck could have hung out with Ewen Bremner. The red-headed actor (who here, God help me, plays a character named "Red") is still apparently suffering from working with Harmony Korine (on "julien donkey-boy"). Bremner plays a likeable but retarded simp who stutters. Why? So when the attack on "Pearl Harbor" comes he can practically piss himself before he can blurt out, "The Japs are coming! The Japs are coming!" before a window blows in smashing him over the head. Bremner is as over-the-top as Affleck is stiff. Thankfully they share no real screen time. Bremner's character is only there so his girlfriend can die anyway. Ahh... poor, poor, retard.

And then there's the sadly misused Kate Beckinsale. As Evelyn, love interest to both Affleck and co-star Josh Hartnett, Beckinsale plays a archetype 40's female who can't seem to decide what to do - until someone - some man - tells her what to do. Then she promptly does the opposite. I guess it's supposed to be ironic when Evelyn becomes the only character that can seem to focus when the attack comes. As a nurse, she apparently practically saves every fucking soldier on the island, even stopping to tell a doctor to get his shit together before promptly using her underwear and bra as tourniquets.

Speaking of irony, that's the only thing the film really has going for it. The idea that these American soldiers (who are portrayed as giddy teenaged simpletons who want to be pilots and nurses) lived on the government payroll in a tropical paradise where they didn't have to lift a finger to do anything is established in the film. This is done so that we can later see them run like rabbits for 90 minutes when disaster finally does strike. They don't have a fucking idea what to do. Imagine if the State Mental Hospital put on a play based on "M*A*S*H" and you'll get an idea of what Bay thinks the hospital on the island must have been like during and after the attack. To give us, the audience, an impression of the mass chaos, Bay smudges the lens of the camera with Vaseline (an entire jar of it, it seems), so everything is out of focus. That's this hack's idea of "artistic." At this point in the film, it doesn't really matter. We really don't give a fuck about any character in the film. It's hard to have any sympathy for the one-dimensional morons. At least they fucking got to see Hawaii. My last vacation was in Cincinnati.

Everything about this film is wrong. Well, almost everything. When Beckinsale finally dumps asswipe marionette Affleck for cutey Hartnett, I got slightly interested in the film. At least Hartnett can simulate romantic feelings for a female. This is apparently beyond the scope of Affleck's acting abilities. And the attack of "Pearl Harbor" is quite a wonderful menagerie of special effects laden war imagery. Bay, no auteur but certainly a CGI maven, is quite adept at bringing part of the atrocity to us. He doesn't make us really give a damn, but he does at least admit that the Americans got there ass whipped here. Bay has no idea what the attack might look like, because he's an idiot who does no research, so he reverts, yet again, to emulating "Titanic." Here, after the war, he has his actors comb the sea, adrift with dead bodies, for survivors. The guy has not an original idea in his head.

Bay, at least, allows the Japanese a bit of dignity by suggesting that one of them, some sort of leader type, has "feelings" and intelligence. Of course that's a part of the problem with the film too. In the politically corrected 21st century, it's impossible to have villains. We never really fully understand why Japan attacks us. They just do. It has something to do with oil. At least they aren't typical foe faux villains. One-dimensional, yes. But not simple bad guys. I guess Bay is not really a historical "revisionist," because he doesn't even offer a fucking historical vision. He's not even a historical visionist. His film's biggest historical surprise is suggesting that FDR may not have known the attack was coming, as history itself has begun to question.

Worse yet, Bay refuses to offer any "bad guy" in his romantic love triangle (which is supposedly the heart of the story), so we never really give a fuck what happens. Eventually, he has to announce that Beckinsale's Evelyn is pregnant, so her choice for mate is obvious (because only one guy has fucked her - guess which one). So then, Evelyn doesn't even have to follow her heart. Her choice is made for her. Thank God for that because Evelyn is such a wishy-washy character, forced to love two men without any real justification for either flame, that Beckinsale has no idea how or why to emote feelings and, instead, follows suit of Affleck and Baldwin and simply sighs a lot. What's an archetypal 90's version of a 40's girl to do? Let fate decide for her!

Bay's film is all flash and no substance. It's a gilded dinner plate with only an onion and some gravy thrown on top. There's nothing to sink your teeth into here, or, at least, nothing you'd want to. His film has no verisimilitude. Bay's pre-war America looks like a fucking TV advertisement. Imagine a world where everything is spit polished and no one throws anything, not even a gum wrapper, on the ground. That is what we have here. It isn't a realistic image of 40's life, it's a fucking floor wax commercial complete with a Hans Zimmer score to "cue" the audience/consumer when to laugh, cry, ache, salute and applaud.

Michael Bay thinks he a sculptor. He thinks audiences are clay that he can shape and mold and manipulate and score. He thinks he is a chef and we will swallow whatever he puts on our plates. He thinks he is a filmmaker who can craft cinematic epics. In fact, he is a hack. "Pearl Harbor" is an embarrassment to the men and women who fought and died in WWII.

In total disrespect, I offer Mr. Bay my one finger salute. As should all movie-goers. As should all WWII vets. As should all history buffs. As should anyone over the age of 17. Let the idiot children of peacetime consumerism pay for this junk. Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor" is as disposable as pop music, disposable as plastic razors, and as disposable as the plastic actors who bring it to dismal cinematic life.

Notes:

With John Voight as FDR, Cuba Gooding Jr. as the token black, James King as Kate Hudson, and Tom Sizemore as the same damn character he has played in every other movie. Also with Catherine Kellner, Ted McGintly, and Mako.

Prerequisite modern pop ballad over end credits by Faith Hill (who is no Celine Dion).

The film's most laughable and insipid moment: Josh Hartnett (on a phone while Pearl Harbor is being attacked) says, (I swear to God), "I think World War 2 just started!"

The film premiered during a gala event held at Pearl Harbor with several survivors of the attack in attendance. The film was shown on a screen 90x60 feet.

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