Why Michael Bay’s much derided Pearl Harbor deserves a second look on its 25th anniversary

This is the latest instalment in our From the Vault feature series, in which we reflect on culturally significant movies celebrating notable anniversaries. When Pearl Harbor was released 25 years ago this month, it became a byword for a certain kind of ultra-crass, ultra-commercial Hollywood filmmaking. Critics sharpened their knives, the film stacked up six Golden Raspberry Award nominations, and Team America: World Police honoured it with a diss track featuring the lyrics: “I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor / I miss you more than that movie missed the point and that’s an awful lot, girl.” But viewed today, is Pearl Harbor really so unforgivably terrible? While nobody is arguing for a Heaven’s Gate-style reassessment – it is still ultra-crass and ultra-commercial – with hindsight, it is easier to see why it became a worldwide box office hit, winning an Oscar for best sound editing. Based on a script by Randall Wallace (Braveheart) and featuring a mixture of real and fictional characters, the film is set in the run-up to the 1941 Japanese attack that brought the US into World War II. Pilots and best friends Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) fall in love with the same woman, nurse Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale), but Pearl Harbor, its aftermath and the ensuing Doolittle Raid – a revenge mission to bomb Tokyo – change their lives forever. No discussion of the film would be complete without acknowledging its flaws, which are glaring. It is deeply corny, featuring clunky dialogue, a mawkish, string-laden score, and the kind of storybook patriotism that makes your teeth ache. “The idea was to make the kind of movie that could have been released in the 40s – unironic, slightly naive – with new technology,” Affleck told GQ. In which case, job done. It also plays fast and loose with the facts. Affleck’s character is so ridiculously heroic that he fights on three continents – Europe, America and Asia – including in the Battle of Britain, which in reality finished a year before the main action starts. “We tried to be accurate, but it’s certainly not meant to be a history lesson,” said producer Jerry Bruckheimer, quoted in The Journal of Military History. As an attempt to ape Titanic – even down to using the same Mexican water tank facility – Pearl Harbor comes off poorly. Director Michael Bay is no James Cameron, and trying to copy what was then the most successful film of all time feels both mercenary and unwise. But by following such a tried-and-tested formula – essentially Titanic meets Top Gun – Pearl Harbor works better than it gets credit for. Sure, the Affleck-Hartnett-Beckinsale love triangle is cheesy, but they are good actors and make us care about what happens to their characters. The wider cast is extraordinary, featuring award winners such as Alec Baldwin, Michael Shannon, Cuba Gooding Jr and Jon Voight, as well as then up-and-comers like Jennifer Garner, Ewen Bremner and Pat Healy. Asian stars Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Mako appear in cutaway sequences of the Japanese forces preparing for war. The early scenes showing the pilots and nurses partying together are charming, adding dramatic weight to what follows. When the 40-minute Pearl Harbor attack finally happens, it doesn’t disappoint. Amid the carnage are some show-stopping bomb’s-eye-view shots, claustrophobic scenes of ships sinking and dragging helpless crew members down with them, and all kinds of daring aerial and underwater stunts. “Jerry Bruckheimer showed Ridley Scott the movie, and the quote [from Scott] was, ‘F*** me!’” Bay told Empire. “We had so much big stuff out there. Real boats, 20 real planes. We had 350 events going off. Three months of rigging on seven boats, stopping a freeway that’s three miles away.” In 2015, when Spectre was awarded a Guinness World Record for a particularly impressive pyrotechnic scene, Bay protested: “James Bond tried to take the largest explosion in the world. Bulls***. Ours is.” In all probability, Bay’s slightly obnoxious maximalism explains part of the film’s appeal, and why it received such a critical mauling. As Roger Ebert noted, “Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours.” But for two hours at least, it plays the clichés pretty effectively – certainly no worse than the likes of Top Gun, which seems to have undergone a generous re-evaluation among Gen X viewers. In the words of James Cameron himself: “He [Bay] loves what I call ‘the big train set’, huge physical production, just as I do. It is the most challenging type of filmmaking, and he does it gorgeously.” Audiences agreed, with Pearl Harbor making nearly US$450 million worldwide. It even did well in Japan, earning US$7.2 million on its opening weekend – the sixth highest of all time in Japan then – so it must have been doing something right. Perhaps, as Project Hail Mary recently showed, audiences just want to see large-scale, original blockbusters on the big screen. If you can stomach three hours of God-Bless-America flag-waving in the current climate, maybe it is due a – cautious – second look. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

Why Michael Bay’s much derided Pearl Harbor deserves a second look on its 25th anniversary

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Pearl Harbor was widely panned upon release in 2001 but with its strong cast and characters and explosive action, is it worth reassessing?

Pearl Harbor was widely panned upon release in 2001 but with its strong cast and characters and explosive action, is it worth reassessing?