by Fiona Underhill, Contributor

After collaborating on the 90s blockbusters Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon, the box office dream-team of Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer reunited with Armageddon star Ben Affleck for the historical epic Pearl Harbor, hoping to replicate the success of the similarly romantically-themed behemoth Titanic. With a huge production budget for the time, of $150 million, Bay spared no expense in blowing up ships and creating huge sets with hundreds of stuntmen, sometimes for sequences that last mere seconds. But Pearl Harbor did not replicate either the box office or Oscar success of Titanic and is widely considered one of the biggest turkeys of all time. Despite this…well…some of us kind of love it.

Pearl Harbor is a film very much in three parts. The first hour and a half (!) focuses on the love story between firstly Nurse Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) and ace pilot Rafe (Ben Affleck). After he dies during the Battle of Britain, Evelyn and Rafe’s childhood best friend Danny (Josh Hartnett), now based in Hawaii, strike up a romance. This is followed by a 30-40 minute sequence which comprises the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor itself – the boom and the bang that makes this an action movie. And this is the point at which the film should definitely end. Because even those of us who like the film and have re-watched it many times (me, I’m talking about me) cannot defend the fact that there is still a whole entire hour of movie left after this point. And Alec Baldwin is in a lot of it.

There are two main reasons I love this film – the romance (and the fact that I was a university student with a HUGE crush on the film’s two male leads at the time Pearl Harbor was released) and because I love disaster movies. The Pearl Harbor attack itself is a thrilling sequence and tension is effectively built as it depicts a sleepy early Sunday morning in paradise being disrupted by something that took the inhabitants totally unawares. Look, I’m not about to defend the truly laughable dialogue and unbearably overpowering score that oozes sentimentality and melodrama into every moment of the romantic scenes. However, Bay did set out to replicate 1940s screen romances and there is something to be said for Evelyn and Rafe’s picnic while hanging off the Queen Mary or Evelyn and Danny’s parachute hangar love scene. Also, the idyllic atmosphere created in the Hawaii scenes before the attack–including the nurses lounging lazily about in an empty hospital–do make the subsequent scenes of havoc and devastation that much more shocking. Ewen Bremner and Jaime King provide brilliant support in these pre-attack scenes, as do Michael Shannon and Tom Sizemore (two actors you’ve almost certainly forgotten are in this film). Shannon’s line-reading of “I got a girlfriend” is everything you’d expect from him. Even Jennifer Garner (who was Mrs Affleck for a long time) is in a supporting role!

Ben Affleck puts in a performance that cements his smugly smarmy cocky persona (something later subverted brilliantly by David Fincher in Gone Girl, of course), but he still somehow remains endearing. His meet-cute with Evelyn, in which he persuades her to pass him, despite being so badly dyslexic, he cannot read the eye chart is delightful and his charm offensive peaks with the “she loves me” line on the train. Josh Hartnett makes a sweetly bumbling Danny–his gangly frame tripping over itself as he fumblingly returns Evelyn’s handkerchief or runs towards her the morning after the night before. Yes, of course it’s funny that Rafe returns from the dead and his fight with Danny over Evelyn is literally interrupted by World War Two arriving in Hawaii. Kate Beckinsale isn’t helped by the fact that Evelyn is something of a wet blanket…but this definitely improves once the attack happens and she takes a leadership role at the hospital, holding it together while everyone around her loses their heads. The hospital scenes–with Evelyn a calm in the middle of the storm–are shot with the edges of the frame distorted and are some of the most effective in the whole movie.

Although the historical accuracy of the Pearl Harbor sequence itself has been much-debated, there is no denying that it’s well-made, with brilliantly-paced tension, followed by thrillingly-filmed explosions, capsizing ships and the air battle, once someone gets benaffleck (as I like to call him) into a “goddamn airplane!” It feels like a film that couldn’t have been made at any other time because the VFX had to be at a certain level for the action scenes to work, but also there were still survivors alive who could give their accounts of what happened. Dan Aykroyd (another actor you’ve definitely forgotten is in this) plays a codebreaker, attempting to locate the missing Japanese fleet and interpret their actions in some of the best parts of the pre-attack build up. Little details such as Michael Shannon talking about adding a fin to his surfboard, followed by the Japanese adding wooden fins to their torpedoes so they work in the shallow harbor do add something to the whole experience. The POV shot of the bomb leaving the plane and following it deep into one of the ships is still spectacular. Less successful is Cuba Gooding Jr as the boxing-cook turned anti-aircraft gunner and Jon Voight as FDR, making for some of the cringiest scenes.

I dearly wish that the love triangle could have been resolved during the Pearl Harbor attack, as one of the love rivals could have easily been killed off on the day itself–problem solved. If you’re anything like me and my friends, you will have strong opinions about which one should be killed off and which one gets to survive and win the girl, but it’s not an easy choice! But alas, Bay drags things out with the excruciating Doolittle Raid which is both boring and bad. Combining Alec Baldwin’s acting with Randall Wallace’s dialogue (which undoubtedly had Bay-injections) will really kill off any goodwill you might feel towards this movie. And the way the love triangle is resolved is NOT GOOD AT ALL! Sometimes the dialogue is so bad it comes around full circle to being good again; “I THINK WORLD WAR TWO JUST STARTED” being the prime example of this. Also, the use of humor is quite well-judged and well-timed throughout, such as some of Danny’s last words to Rafe being “can you get someone else to write my name on my tombstone?” 

I can’t pretend that if Pearl Harbor hadn’t come out at a very specific time in my life, starring two hot young actors of the day, I probably wouldn’t feel the affection that I do towards it. But alas, it is my lot in life that I find it to be a nostalgic comfort-watch and will probably continue to keep re-watching it for many years to come. On my most recent re-watch I tried to view it with as coldly an objective and cynical eye as I could muster and granted, the last hour is painful. But I’m still going to defend the first two-thirds of this film – an hour or so of romance (with charming performances that counteract the risible dialogue), an hour or so of disaster movie – what more could you want? That’s a good time! The Pearl Harbor attack sequence is a well-made, carefully-paced extended action set-piece that is still thrilling to watch and yes, I do think holds up next to the sinking of the Titanic. So, if you haven’t seen this film for two decades or never watched it, due to its awful reputation, maybe give it a chance. You may find yourself seduced by the dashing Rafe, sweetly smiling at the shy Danny or basking in the warm glow of one of Evelyn’s beloved sunsets. Or you might find it laughably bad – either way, it’s entertaining!