Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #43: Pearl Harbor

We finally get to World War II, and we start with one of the more lambasted historical epics. Before we get into the movie itself, here’s a brief historical overview of Pearl Harbor. The United States, despite President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s desire to get involved, wanted to stay out of the large wars that had broken out in Europe and China during the late 1930s. By 1941, however, the nation was already starting to get entangled. For example, the US was appalled by the horrific atrocities Japan was committing in China, so it decided to cut off oil exports. Needing oil to continue its war in China, the Japanese decided to strike at the American and European colonial powers in a rapid, surprise onslaught. The date of the attack was December 7, 1941 (December 8 if you were in Asia).

Pearl Harbor is considered a great example of a bad movie, though also quite watchable for the most part. Much of the blame for it has been placed on the director Michael Bay, who’s known for many really stupid but financially successful films. However, while Bay does share some blame, it should be noted that Buena Vista Pictures (this is a Disney movie!) had a much bigger say in how Pearl Harbor turned out. Bay had originally wanted an R-rated update on Tora, Tora, Tora (1970), the highly regarded near-documentary on the famous Pearl Harbor attack, taking advantage of CGI and other modern technical innovations.

The studio had other ideas. James Cameron’s historical disaster epic Titanic had just made box-office and Oscar history. Since Pearl Harbor was also a great historical disaster (and one that involved ships, no less), Michael Bay was told to make something similar, a three-hour romance set amid the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The result was not good. Michael Bay had made his name with entertaining if not always intelligent action romps. The romance in his movies is often superficial or, for lack of a better word, horny, so pulling off a gripping love triangle was beyond his capabilities. Also, since no romance existed historically, he had to create fictional characters. For the first half of the movie the runtime is dominated by a romance between hotshot pilot Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck playing a kind of douchebag male lead) and nurse Evelyn Jonson (Kate Beckinsale). When Rafe is reported dead while volunteering for the Battle of Britain (more on inaccuracy later), she quickly falls in love with Rafe’s best friend Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett). Of course Ben Affleck wasn’t going to be killed off that early in the film, so he turns out to be alive. For some reason nobody in the military bothers to notify the new couple of this revelation, so he walks in on them to create an awkward love triangle. (here's one of the love scenes)

Danny (Josh Hartnett) and Rafe (Ben Affleck) hang about
in dirtied casualwear after surviving the Pearl Harbor attack

The romance was so insipid that critics and audiences alike began to root for the Japanese to come and bomb Pearl Harbor. Indeed, the movie does get better once the event happens halfway through a three hour story. Because love triangle eats up so much screentime, the historical characters were seriously downgraded and in a couple places completely replaced. For example, instead of a detailed series of scenes showing various US intelligence officers trying to figure out what the Japanese are up to, we get Dan Aykroyd as a completely new figure who appears to be doing everything himself.

More controversially, main protagonists Rafe and Danny steal the real-life exploits of George Welch and Kenneth Taylor, two pilots who in America’s only bright spot of the battle were able to get their fighters into the air and shoot down a few Japanese planes. It is sad that they were cut out of the narrative and replaced by two-thirds of a love triangle, but perhaps one could argue that it’s better than dragging Welch and Taylor’s names into a goofy romance. I do take issue, however, with how the plane battle unfolds. The Japanese fighters start to behave like Tie Fighters from Star Wars, following the heroes into insane turns and dives. At one point the protagonists even trick two of them into flying into each other by playing "Chicken." No trained pilot in real life would be dragged into such a silly trap (I learned there was a tactic called the Tach Weave wherein two American planes would crisscross paths and outmaneuver the Japanese Zeros into a trap, but it made a lot more sense).

Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) wears many different outfits
during the movie. I learned that she would actually have
worn an official off-duty uniform like most soldiers.

The bulk of the remaining fictional characters are the pilot, mechanic, and nurse friends of the three leads. Some of them get their own little side romances. I was surprised to learn that Jennifer Garner was in this movie as a minor nurse character. On the subject of the nurses, they’re involved in one of the aspects you can definitely blame Bay for, which is potty humor. There’s a whole flashback sequence where they’re giggling about the time they medically injected pilots in their butts. Later on we get to watch children taking a whiz as Japanese planes fly by. Seriously, Michael Bay, can you take this tragic and violent event a little more seriously?

The actual historical characters are performed solidly, if not written too well. As stated before, the main problem is that the fictional love triangle takes up so much time that we don’t really get to delve into the thinking of the major military and political figures. Quite a few appear so briefly you might not know you made it into the movie. I didn’t even realize that Admiral William Halsey (Glen Morshower), Admiral Raymond Spruance (Madison Mason) and General George Marshall (Scott Wilson) were there as cameos. I mistook Halsey for some random naval officer. Much stronger is Jon Voight as President FDR. Voight is able to give the leader gravitas in his short scenes. One of the more liked ones is when, told that an air strike on Japan can’t be done, he defies his polio and stands up from his wheelchair. This never happened, but it comes off as much more badass than the ludicrous antics of the pilot characters. It should be noted that his famous December 7 speech is edited down, not mentioning the various other locations Japan hit on the same day. It’s really quite remarkable how widespread the start of the Pacific War was and Japan might hold a record for most territory conquered in the shortest time.

Cuba Gooding Jr. managed to be a fan favorite as African-American Petty Officer Doris Miller, often called Dorrie. The reason for his character’s success is that he was actually a real person and is portrayed well. He’s accurately shown as a mere mess officer on the USS West Virginia, as well as its boxing champion. His most famous moment, however, is when after relaying orders from the mortally wounded captain of his ship, he got on a gun and shot down a Japanese plane at a time when the Americans were getting their asses kicked. Since blacks were usually excluded from combat, this was a big deal for African-Americans who wanted to prove they could be as heroic as whites. He’s actually not all that naturally integrated into the movie as a whole, literally a token black character. His only interaction with the main characters is a visit to Evelyn when he needs to be stitched up after a boxing match (yet another inaccuracy as the US military still had segregationist policies on the books and wouldn’t let a white female nurse be alone with a black man).

President Franklin Roosevelt (Jon Voight) actually manages to be kind of cool in this movie.

The Japanese characters generated far more controversy and also, from a filmmaking perspective, have some poorly scripted scenes. The characters will state things to each other that they would already know in very brief cutaways from the love triangle. Mako plays Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, often spouting real and supposed quotes. Yamamoto was one of the officers who had spent time studying in America, so he was personally opposed to starting a war with it. While America customarily had a small military because of its old fear of a standing army, he knew that its heavy industrial capacity could create a juggernaut once provoked. As it turns out, Yamamoto was right.

In general, though, the Japanese point of view is barebones. They’re just the threat for the main characters to fight. One scene that drew criticism was their assault on civilians and in particular the military hospital. Yamamoto insisted that the pilots only go after military targets, because time was valuable and also perhaps because he had a more humane concern (sadly absent in many Japanese commanders). In the movie fighter planes are strafing nurses and wounded sailors as they try to make their way to the hospital. While the Japanese performed numerous atrocities throughout the war, this incident never happened. Civilians were hit, but these were collateral casualties during attacks on the airfields. When he thought up the hospital scene, Michael Bay probably just wanted to put his female characters in danger and didn’t think about the implications of presenting bad history.

On a more humorous note, many Japanese viewers were more offended by the outdoor strategy scenes, which include sunny meetings around a table and an outdoor pool set up to look like Pearl Harbor. It turns out this is inaccurate because the Japanese believe important meetings must be held indoors. To do it outdoors is the mark of a primitive and barbaric people. Also, Michael Bay had many of the Mitsubishi Zero fighters painted a dark green. This was done to make them stand out more. In reality naval fighters were a light gray, while the Japanese Army employed green planes.

The airfield comes under attack, finally putting the actual main protagonists in danger.

And this segues into the next topic: the general inaccuracy of military hardware. This is astonishing because Michael Bay originally envisioned an update of the heavily realistic Tora, Tora, Tora. During a newsreel scene showing Nazi Germany conquering Europe, there’s footage of an American tank. The American P-40 Warhawks, the standard fighter plane, are like the Zeros not quite right, being later models which had additional guns mounted on their wings. As for the ships at Pearl Harbor, they are not in their historical locations, set up instead for certain cinematic shots, and many ships in the backgrounds are more modern naval vessels from as late as the 1970s! Then during the Doolittle Raid, American personnel on Hawaii are listening to the pilots’ reports during the operation. Back then there was no way for individual planes to network their radios and transmit their conversations hundreds, much less thousands of miles east from China to Hawaii.

Yes, this is an actual line in the movie.

The battles themselves are a mixed bag on the accuracy front, though the action sequences are thrilling. The Battle of Britain subplot is full of historical issues. Since America was neutral, no citizen would be allowed to fight for Britain. Those who did so had to renounce their citizenship, Rafe doing it is especially inaccurate because he’s still an active service member and this would be tantamount to official American intervention. If the movie was accurate, Rafe would be stuck with his unit on Pearl Harbor and we wouldn’t have suffered through the love triangle. Furthermore, the Battle of Britain took place July through October, 1940, more than a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. While there is a time gap between Rafe going down and his return, it can’t be that long. Also, we clearly see the Japanese planning their Pearl Harbor attack during this period, so it would have to be later 1941.

The filmmakers put little effort in detailing the waves and formations of the Pearl Harbor attack. We get no sense of which American ship is where and how the Japanese planned out their various attack waves. It doesn’t help that most of the characters are stationed away from the ships, so aside from Dorrie Miller’s little arc we’ve got no emotional investment in the hundreds of sailors getting killed. If you have enough prerequisite knowledge, you’d know that the ship that turns upside down is the USS Oklahoma. The one that gets totally blown up is the USS Arizona (it’s post-war memorial appears in the background of one shot!). Because of the film’s flaws and the decision to shoot it like an action blockbuster, it comes off as less than a horrifying surprise attack and more like a thrill ride, because I’ll be honest I do enjoy watching this whole sequence.

Because Michael Bay wants to end his movies with the “good guys” winning, the actual last act is the Doolittle Raid. This was a morale-boosting operation, showing that the Americans could hit the Japanese on their home turf. While he’s turned into a gruff military man cliché, I do enjoy Alec Baldwin as James H. Doolittle, the military aviator who volunteered to lead the mission. Michael Bay put more care into historical tidbits here. The bombers to be used were larger than those customarily used on aircraft carriers, so the pilots had to train hard to get them into the air quickly or else they’d drop into the ocean. Doolittle also had Japanese peace medals, given years earlier to America, attached to the bombs to send a message and this fact is included.

Less accurate is the presence of Rafe and Danny. While the Doolittle Raid was a volunteer mission, it would have required qualified bomber, not fighter, pilots. There’s actually a big difference between piloting a swift fighter plane and a larger multi-man aircraft. As in real life, the bombers did light damage to Tokyo, then for the most part crashed in Eastern China where many were killed or captured. The movie gets a little final action sequence with the crashed pilots against Japanese Army soldiers to sort out the love triangle and then we finally reach the end credits with a love song, just like in Titanic. Oh, and Michael Bay doesn't mention the horrendous retaliatory campaign the Japanese carried out in the Chinese provinces where the bombers landed. Japanese Army forces under Shunroku  Hata not only attacked Chinese soldiers (along with Claire Chennault's formerly volunteer American plane unit), but he possible oversaw the killings of up to a quarter million civilians. Some were killed using biological weapons developed by the horrid Unit 731. But I guess that would have created too much of a bummer ending.

James Doolittle (Alec Baldwin in the middle) discusses the upcoming raid with our heroes.

Pearl Harbor is not a good movie. A historical movie can be both inaccurate and good at the same time, but here the interesting stuff is forced into small scenes because of a studio-mandated and not done too well romance. If you want a great movie about Pearl Harbor, there’s Tora, Tora, Tora. But if you want a long good time with friends, Michael Bay’s attempt does have its entertainment value.

Rating: 4/10